---
title: "Transnistria: The Strangest Place on Earth"
description: "Nestled into a faraway corner of Eastern Europe, in a quiet, sleepy part of the world where borscht flows like wine and vodka flows like vodka, you'll find the small, landlocked country of Moldova. Nestled into the crook of Ukraine's arm to the north, south, and east, and resting happily beside Romania to the west, Moldova is the sort of place that most people wouldn't think about once in the span of a year. It's not a major or even a minor geopolitical player, it's got hardly two and a half million people to its name, and its history, as a former SSR of the Soviet Union, could be cobbled together relatively easily using excerpts of the histories of all the nations around it.\n\nBut Moldova's got a secret, a small, well-hidden pocket of the country that claims it isn't Moldova at all. Known as Transnistria, sprawled across a narrow strip of land running up and down the majority of Moldova's eastern edge, this breakaway region claims that it's a country all its own, despite not being recognized by a single nation on Earth. And somehow, in Transnistria's case, its breakaway status manages to be one of the less-weird things about it. From a massive corporate monolith that seems to rule the whole country, to a culture that still idolizes Soviet culture decades after the rest of the region left it behind, to its geopolitical relevance both as a smugglers' haven and as a Russian proxy, Transnistria might well be the strangest place on Earth—and it's Transnistria that we'll be visiting today.\n\n## Transnistrian Fundamentals\n\nBefore we dive in on all the weirdness that is Transnistria, let's start with the basics to figure out just what sort of place we're dealing with. Transnistria boasts a population of some 465,000 people, spread across an area just over four thousand square kilometers, under three times the land area of Greater London, but built in a valley some two hundred kilometers long with a width of just a few kilometers in some areas, it's one of the more interesting geographical anomalies of the world. The region stretches across the bank of the Dniester River, separating it from Moldova, and Transnistria's own name even reflects that fact—trans-nistria is an anglicization of trans-Dneister, meaning, beyond the Dneister River. This simple geographic separation is one of a few reasons why Transnistria considers itself as an entity apart from Moldova, but we'll get into the specifics of how that works shortly.\n\nThe Transnistrian capital city, a small regional hub called Tiraspol, makes up a little less than a third of the country's population. The breakaway region is administered as a unitary republic, under President Vadim Krasnoselsky and a Supreme Council made up of 33 members, most of whom share very close ties with international interests in Russia. Economically, Transnistria gets by mostly on its production of steel and textiles, as well as electricity, and although there's a *lot* more about its economy that we'll be getting into shortly, suffice for now to say that the region's total GDP, a hair over 1.2 billion dollars US, does not go very far when it's divided among nearly half a million people. Transnistria trades in its own Transnistrian ruble, a currency that can't be used or exchanged anywhere else on Earth except in a few bus stations and shops in nearby parts of Moldova, and, predictably, the currency has devalued quite a bit with time.\n\nIn keeping with its status as a sort of waypoint within the former Soviet bloc, the region is quite diverse, with about a quarter of the population being ethnic Russians, about a third being Ukrainians, and about a third being Moldovans and Romanians. Linguistically, too, the area is a bit of an Eastern European melting pot, although Eastern Orthodox Christianity exerts a controlling influence among Transnistria's religious sects. Internationally, Transnistria is recognized by only three other meaningful entities, all of whom are their own breakaway states: Abkhazia and South Ossetia in the country of Georgia, and Artsakh on the territory of Azerbaijan. But when it comes to the internationally recognized countries in the area, particularly Ukraine, Moldova, and Russia, they most certainly know that Transnistria exists, even if they don't entertain Transnistrian claims to independence.\n\nNow, even from this small snapshot of Transnistria, a few things should immediately become clear. On the grand scheme, we are dealing with a region that, even if it were a country, would hardly command much attention on its own. In terms of population, it's roughly as populous as Belize, the Bahamas, or Iceland, countries that typically are only brought up internationally as a vacation destination, and with no stunning beaches or volcanic tundra to explore, Transnistria doesn't even have that going for it.\n\nWhat it does have, are a number of characteristics that turn it into a very insular place, both intentionally and unintentionally. Just the fact that it's separated from the rest of Moldova by a river, nestled into its own valley, isn't a half-bad starting point, but add the use of its own currency, add an ethnic makeup that looks nothing like the rest of Moldova, and add a ruling government that claims it isn't part of Moldova at all, and what you get, is a place where a whole lot of rules and norms about the way the world works are going to fall away. In a hermetically sealed environment like that, things are going to get weird, and they start, with an organization known as Sheriff.\n\n## Life Under Sheriff\n\nOn Tuesday, September 28, 2021, the Spanish football club Real Madrid marched onto the Champions League pitch, for a match they could win with their eyes closed and both hands tied behind their back. Their opponents, that day, were a team called Sheriff Tiraspol, hailing from, and bearing the name, of Transnistria's capital city, and to hear the entire world tell it, Sheriff Tiraspol was going to collapse in tears the second that any player from Real Madrid so much as breathed in their direction. Founded in 1997, representing a tiny stretch of land that nobody had ever heard of, Sheriff Tiraspol's players looked for all the world like a granny who'd found her way into a black-metal concert instead of the knitting circle next door. Metadata company Gracenote gave Sheriff Tiraspol just a 1.4% chance at winning the game before it began, with their team, ranked 175th in the league, guaranteed to take a loss to third-ranked Madrid and be patted on their heads for trying their best.\n\nExcept Sheriff Tiraspol didn't lose, that day, and they didn't even draw. In one of the most unlikely sporting upsets in history, the little team from Transnistria beat Real Madrid two goals to one, and completely shut the Spaniards out from scoring in open play. It was the sort of performance that required either Real Madrid's team to have all suffered a head trauma the day before, or required Sheriff Tiraspol to be guided by the hand of God. But, then, that latter option might not have been so unlikely after all, because the football team Sheriff Tiraspol, like just about everything else in Transnistria, belongs to the Sheriff company—and in everyday Transnistrian life, Sheriff is about as close to a deity as anyone could get.\n\nSecond only to the economic power of Transnistria's state-owned Moldova Steel Works, Sheriff exerts extreme economic power over this small, breakaway region, even though other than their football team's occasional upset wins, they're all but unheard-of in the rest of the world. Sheriff rules Transnistria with all the monopolistic authority of an Industrial-Age company town, with Sheriff-branded gas stations, supermarkets, television, mobile-phone networks, literary publishing, alcohol, baked goods, advertising, and construction, not to mention football, all under the company's direct control. All told, Sheriff commands a hold on some sixty percent of the entire Transnistrian economy, with total monopolies on several elements of the regional economy, specifically trade, oil, and media.\n\nAnd when we say Sheriff rules Transnistria, we aren't kidding. Co-created by a Moldovan-Russian billionaire named Viktor Gushan, who was known as \"the Sheriff\" during his time serving as a member of the KGB—and, no, we're not making that supervillain origin story up—Sheriff was exempted from customs duties early in Transnistria's political history, and they exert such strong control over Transnistria's only political party that they're functionally a political arm to ensure that Sheriff stays in business. So deep are Sheriff's ties all up and down Transnistria, that the region's former President, a man named Yevgeny Shevchuk, had to flee Transnistria after his term ended because Gushan and Sheriff were allegedly trying to assassinate him, as retaliation for Shevchuk having called Sheriff's state corruption out during his time in office.\n\nDepending on who you ask, Gushan is often considered the de-facto leader of Transnistria, pulling strings in the dominant political party, Obnovleniem which has swelled with his support since the year 2000. The leaders of the party are generally quite amenable to Sheriff, and vice versa, and the state directly pays out its own budget to Sheriff and its subsidiary companies. Controls over the products imported to Transnistria overwhelmingly favor Sheriff's business interests, ensuring that, say, Sheriff-brand Vodka doesn't have to compete with Cousin Igor's Very Good Vodkadrink, or that anybody requesting a permit to open a non-Sheriff petrol station has their application, shall we say, lost in the mail. Today, Sheriff's five-pointed star is all but ubiquitous in Transnistria, unavoidable when walking down a major street in Tiraspol or the region's other small cities, and watching from across the Dniester, Moldova is basically unable to intervene. The nation has attempted to bring non-Sheriff Transnistrian businesses into a greater partnership with the rest of the Moldovan state, and tried to get them access to the markets of the European Union, a move that has certainly had some effect, but in many ways, this is but a small erosion away from the immense power that Sheriff holds.\n\nAnd it's important to note, here, that Sheriff's rise is widely understood to have been a brutal piece of business. Far more than simply buying up factories and undercutting competitors, Sheriff is believed to have played a very active role in the real violence of Transnistria's early years of independence, with the company's enforcers killing, and being killed by, a long list of rival business leaders who attempted to stand in their way. As Transnistria's former Foreign Minister, Valery Litskay, put it in an interview with Agence France-Presse, \"If you go to our cemeteries, you will see whole alleys of bandits\". As Litskay explains it, the bandits who survived those early wars, and fought on the side of Sheriff, are now better known as police officers, wearing a thin veil of legitimacy in order to propagate their business empire further.\n\nBut just as insidious as Sheriff's dystopic hold over the Transnistrian economy, are its instruments of social control. Now, in order to have this conversation at all, we've got to work inside a base assumption that by and large, the actions of the Transnistrian government are tightly interrelated to the goals and objectives of the Sheriff corporation, but when we take the two together, Transnistria's disturbing patterns of human rights abuses are cast in a whole other light. As for what those human rights abuses are, we'll just pull a few of the highlights from a 2020 report by the US State Department: Forced disappearances by the authorities, confirmed cases of torture and degradation by the authorities, dangerous prison conditions where prisoners risk death while incarcerated, arbitrary detention, judicial corruption, severe restrictions on free expression and the press, active repression against journalists, online privacy violations and severe content restrictions, a nearly-complete set of restrictions on free movement, a lack of will to investigate violence against women or LGBT persons, laws against same-sex sexual contact between consenting adults, and, as a cherry on top, child labor.\n\nAnd when an ordinary Transnistrian runs afoul of Sheriff, or is compelled to work in dangerous conditions on Sheriff's behalf, the company is highly unlikely to face any accountability for what may come next. In one example, a businessman named Vadim Ceban was found dead near his home in Transnistria on June 10, 2020, beaten to death with a shovel. Ceban had openly criticizes the Transnistrian government, fought back against Sheriff's economy, and posted an image in a Transnistrian Facebook group with the words, \"Sheriff Repent\". And in a similar case, earlier this year in July of 2023, a man named Oleg Khorzhan was murdered in his home in Transnistria for unknown reasons. Khorzhan, the head of the Transnistrian Communist Party, was Transnistria's last surviving opposition leader prior to his death. Journalists who have attempted to expose abusive or unhealthy work conditions at Sheriff's factories have been threatened and fined, and members of Transnistrian militias, often directly loyal to Sheriff, operate with impunity across the region.\n\nAnd it doesn't stop there. Defectors from the Transnistrian armed forces have been disappeared when returning to visit family, and ordinary citizens have been detained and disappeared, often without reason. Prisoners who've done time in Transnistria have reported being starved, drugged, and exposed to prisoners who are actively infected with tuberculosis, or having medical access withheld after being beaten by their guards. Victims of domestic violence in Transnistria have basically no recourse unless they receive broken bones or a concussion, with anything less, seen as only an administrative offense. Even children have not been spared; in one incident at an orphanage for children with special needs, many such children were beaten and dunked into washbasins against their will as forms of corporal punishment. And, as we've always got to note when discussing parts of the world that restrict press access and obscure the truth of their situation, these are just the incidents we know about. We can all but guarantee that there is more, and quite possibly worse, going on that we may never know about.\n\nThen, we've got to discuss the authority Transnistria exerts over its own media environment. On the one hand, writers who attempt to expose the realities of the situation in Transnistria are typically greeted with outright retaliation; one writer named Larisa Calic, who attempted to expose violent hazing within the Transnistrian armed forces, was charged with extremism and forced to go into hiding. Another, a Communist Party leader named Alexandr Samonii, suffered the same fate after criticizing the regime on social media. Other Transnistrians have received prison sentences for insulting public officials, and journalists in the country have taken to self-censorship, simply in order to keep their heads.\n\nOn the other hand, there's the narratives that Transnistria and the Sheriff corporation do have control over. Transnistria has two media organizations: the state-run Public Agency for Telecommunication, and, you guessed it, Sheriff Holding. Sheriff also controls Transnistria's largest Internet service provider, and has been accused of trying to eliminate all other ISPs in the region. Both the government and Sheriff crank out a long line of generally pro-Russia, generally pro-Sheriff, and generally anti-Moldova propaganda pieces, in both print and television. Ukrainian, Moldovan, and European media can be accessed, including television channels, but they require extra fees to access, while Transnistrian and Russian media do not. In a country where GDP per capita is the equivalent of under 2,600 dollars US, it's not hard to imagine that any free media might quickly become unaffordable.\n\nBut even despite the incredible depth of Sheriff's hold over Transnistria, and the outright dystopian environment that Sheriff and the Transnistrian government have created, the people of Transnistria still maintain a presence in the rest of Moldova. Those who hold a Transnistrian passport can travel to the rest of the country with relative ease, many Transnistrians hold jobs across Moldova, and many extended families have members on both sides of the regional dividing line. Sheriff Tiraspol competes against the rest of Moldova's football teams, where they've won league titles in twenty of the last twenty-two seasons by buying a better roster of players than anyone else in Moldova could even hope to achieve. Sadly for the players of Sheriff Tiraspol, very few people actually show up to watch the games anymore, given that their outcomes are functionally preordained, but, well, that doesn't matter much when the football team exists to launder massive amounts of money…allegedly. Far more important to Sheriff, in any case, is the degree to which Sheriff Tiraspol, Transnistrian currency and passports, and the Sheriff conglomeration's hand in many, many industries, afford them the leverage to operate with impunity inside Transnistria, while the rest of Moldova looks on, stuck with a neighbor that might as well be from another world.\n\n## History of a Breakaway State\n\nIn its current state, Transnistria is a place weighed down by Mafia-style corporatism, isolated and cut off from most of the world…but in many ways, the seeds for its current state were planted long ago, by a series of decisions made deep in the heart of the Soviet Union.\n\nTransnistria has been distinct from the area now known as Moldova for quite a long time, with the Dniester River forming a natural divide between its west bank, a Romanian-speaking population, and its east bank, a Ukrainian-speaking population. Of course, this is something of an oversimplification compared to the real complexities of that time, but we'll hold off on a real lesson in 17th-century Bessarabian history today. The first real point of interest here, came in the late 18th and 19th centuries, as migration of Romanian-speakers to the far side of the Dniester began to increase, and lay the groundwork for the much more multi-ethnic Transnistria we still see today.\n\nBy the time that the Russian Empire more-or-less evolved into the Soviet Union, the place we now call Transnistria was already somewhat diverse, and it was quite clearly distinct from its western neighbor Moldova, then called Bessarabia. But in 1940, both Bessarabia and Transnistria were lumped into the so-called Moldovan Soviet Socialist Republic, with few, if any steps taken to address the divides between the larger region and the smaller one.\n\nThis maneuver was not unintentional by the Soviet Union's decision-makers, and it wasn't the only case of such a decision being made. The Soviets had a long history of consolidating their Soviet Socialist Republics, functionally the equivalent of states or provinces under the Soviet umbrella, in ways that integrated smaller regions that were either disinterested in unifying with the rest of the people inside their Republic, or outright opposed to the idea. The ramifications of this choice have played out again and again in recent years, between Azerbaijan and its Nagorno-Karabakh region, Georgia and its South Ossetian and Abkhazian regions, and in the Caucasus regions of Russia, where separatist movements and both violent and nonviolent resistance to a centralized authority have become commonplace. But back in the days of the Soviets, that was largely the point; after all, how could a Soviet Socialist Republic begin a coordinated uprising against the Union, when it couldn't even get its own inhabitants to live together peacefully?\n\nStarting in the 1920s, the Soviet Union took active steps to create a Moldovan identity that could stand separately from the influence of nearby Romania. Historically speaking, Moldova's roots were largely Romanian, and pre-Moldovan Bessarabia was considered to be part of Romania outright. But with Bessarabia sequestered under Russian rule for most of the years that Romania went about establishing itself as a nation-state, the Soviet Union was keen on leveraging those existing divides in order to consolidate modern-day Moldova under the Soviet umbrella. With the help of the Union, a Moldovan language was developed, using the same Cyrillic alphabet that Russia does, and a broader spirit of Moldovan identity, and even nationalism, was very intentionally fostered. As young Moldovan nationalists began to grow up and pursue political careers, the Soviet Union saw to it that they could find their way into real power, starting a sort of snowball effect that saw that Moldovan spirit really take hold.\n\nBut Transnistria, already distinct from the rest of Moldova, experienced an opposite phenomenon. Between an influx of Russian laborers and immigrants enticed to the region by jobs in heavy industry, a great many ethnic Ukrainians who had already made Transnistria their home, and many ethnic Moldovan-Romanians with closer ties to Moldova proper—including some who had been getting in on pro-Moldovan movements—the area diversified, largely losing its appetite for nationalism of any sort. Moldovan, Ukrainian, Russian, and Romanian each became perfectly acceptable languages in the area, rates of intermarriage picked up, and while the region didn't exactly stand opposed to the rest of the Moldovan SSR, it stood…well, perhaps a bit apathetic.\n\nAnd when, in the late 1980s, the rest of the Moldovan SSR began exploring the idea of independence from the Soviet Union, in favor of a return to closer ties with Romania and the establishment of a sovereign Moldovan state, that news wasn't received well in Transnistria. Fears of so-called \"Romanianization\" only picked up as Moldovan nationalists adopted the Romanian tricolor flag, and advocated reforming Moldova's linguistic landscape to prefer Romanian as a state language. In response, Transnistrians organized into labor collectives and led strikes against Romanianization, emphasizing the damage it might do to the more multicultural communities and families that were, by now, well-established on the other side of the Dnieper. Some of Moldova's strongest Transnistrian opponents, were themselves ethnic Moldovan-Romanians, who argued that too strong a lean into Romanian language and culture would disadvantage their friends, neighbors, and even members of their own families. In the words of one Transnistrian named Anatolii Tabak, whose family was just one of thousands like it in the region, \"I am a Moldovan, my wife is Russian, my kids study in Ukraine. I have understood Russian my whole life. I believe that Russian and Moldovan should have the same rights.\" For someone in that situation, it's not hard to imagine how the positions of the Moldovan nationalist movement, especially some hardliners who advocated for the expulsion of Russians and Ukrainians from Moldova entirely, might have been a beast worth fighting.\n\nNow, sitting in the mid-2020s, it's easy to look back and see how a Transnistria that chose to keep its ties with Russian language and culture would become an ideal target for the modern Russian regime to exploit, and we'll absolutely be getting to more of that later, but for the Transnistrians of 1989 and 1990, these concerns didn't even register. Their crisis was much more of an existential one, and in the face of Moldovan policies that would have infringed upon what many Transnistrians saw as ethnolinguistic equality, the Transnistrian population decided to look toward their own autonomous future instead of integrating with their neighbor.\n\nFirst, this took the form of political separatism, in a series of referendums that established the Pridnestrovian Moldovian Soviet Socialist Republic—or, if you'd like less of a mouthful, they established Transnistria as its own autonomous entity, loyal to the USSR. And once the Soviet Union itself began to collapse, Tiraspol declared Transnistria to be an independent entity, despite a lack of recognition from the neighboring Moldovan capital of Chisinau. The situation escalated further and further, and by March of 1992, it had deteriorated into open war.\n\nBut this is where things began to get messy for Transnistria, on account of the Russian 14th Army. Although they'd already been stationed in Transnistria for the last several decades, the 14th Army had largely stood by while the region's referendums took place, but when war broke out, they saw fit to intervene on the side of Transnistria. According to Russia's defense minister at the time, this was not an approved action; instead, all accounts pointed to those Russian soldiers deciding to take up arms of their own volition, in defense of a region where many had established their own homes and families.\n\nWith the 14th Army's help, Moldova and Transnistria fought to a stalemate by July of 1992, and a ceasefire agreement essentially made Transnistria its own autonomous region—not a recognized sovereign state, but about as close to it as a breakaway region can be without a seat at the UN. Transnistria joined the growing list of so-called frozen conflicts across the former Soviet bloc, and Moldova settled into a generally tolerant orientation toward Transnistria, largely because of a lack of any other options.\n\nBut the chaos and uncertainty of the Transnistrian war had soured things significantly in Transnistria by the time a ceasefire was agreed, with the idea of Transnistrian multiculturalism giving way to Russian nationalism. For decades prior to the outbreak of war, Russian-language publications of Transnistria had a nasty habit of vilifying the idea of Romanian influence in the region, telling fabricated stories in which Russian- or Ukrainan-speakers would lose their Slavic identity and their linguistic heritage upon exposure to Romanian ideals and culture, and when it came time for the Slavic peoples of Transnistria to take up arms against ethnic Romanian-Moldovans, that sort of pre-established rhetoric was brought to the forefront. On the one hand, it was used to invigorate ethnic Russians and Ukrainians to fight longer and harder against Moldova, but on the other hand, it substantively changed the way that Transnistria worked. If the enemy, so to speak, was Moldova, then Transnistria shifted into an allegiance toward what they perceived to be a bulwark against Moldovan nationalism: Russian nationalism.\n\nIn the following years, the Russian language evolved into Transnistria's de-facto state language, and though Ukrainian and Moldovan are still recognized as official languages in Transnistria today, neither have been used in some time. Most schools in Transnistria now educate their students in Russian, and although Russian influence is balanced out somewhat by the Transnistrian government's effort to fund Moldovan-language media, it's not hard to see which language ultimately \"won\". Predictably, this sort of perceived Russification in Transnistria only drove the rest of Moldova further away, and that increased hostility and skepticism from Moldova, only proved the point of pro-Russian Transnistrians. Those in Transnistria who opposed the shift toward Russian, largely moved westward to Moldova proper, a sort of ideological self-sorting that has only led Transnistria to become even more isolated.\n\nOnce that isolation really set in, Transnistria began to devolve, not loudly or explosively or with any sort of real civil war, but in a slow, quiet attrition in which early attempts at a strong state system were worn down by a number of outside interests. With Russia able to support such a friendly breakaway region, even as it rested right on newly-independent Moldova's doorstep, Russian state and non-state influence began to seep further and further into the country's foundation. Corporate interests, like those of the Sheriff conglomerate, began to consolidate Transnistrian business holdings, while as economic hardship and resource scarcity began to set in, Russia started to offer more and more in the way of financial and economic support. After all, the money it takes to run Transnistria is roughly the amount that a single Russian oligarch has in their pockets, and when that small sum is compared against the benefits of having a loyal, pro-Russian region in that part of the world, there's no real reason not to spend that little bit of coin. With greater and greater Russian influence, has come a greater and greater fondness for Russia within Transnistria, and within just a few years, that fondness had transitioned into political control of Transnistria by politicians and multimillionaires who've been more than happy to do Russia's bidding.\n\nWhere that leaves Transnistria now, is as something resembling a Russian exclave, one where nostalgia for the Soviet Union is not just allowed, but actively fostered in many cases. Transnistria's flag is the only one left in the entire world featuring communism's traditional hammer-and-sickle, and it's widely described as existing in some sort of Soviet-era time warp. A statue of Vladimir Lenin glares imposingly outward from the steps of the parliament building in Tiraspol, and images of Russian President Vladimir Putin are commonplace, not just in private citizens' homes but in municipal and federal government offices as well. The city features a Stalinist Palace of Culture, and a Soviet T-34 tank left as a monument to victory in World War II. All this, even though by any real measure, Transnistria isn't communist at all. Vladimir Lenin, just by example, would probably sooner have vomited at the idea of Sheriff's control over the region than endorsed it. This sort of pro-communist imagery in Transnistria isn't exactly a policy position, or at least not in any meaningful way; instead, it's the functional equivalent of wearing a Che Guevara shirt while enjoying all the perks of downtown Brooklyn. All the elements of Soviet-style state control are still present—the restrictions on personal and civil rights, the punitive detention and disappearances, the blatant state propaganda, those sorts of things. But it's a status within Soviet and Russian hegemony, a heritage of worker solidarity, and a culture of Transnistrian pride that Transnistria is working to memorialize, not the Leninist vision that led to the rise of the Soviet Union in the first place.\n\n## Smugglers' Paradise\n\nWith Transnistria's complex history in mind, one might at least hope that the region could find some semblance of peace under Russia's influence, where, sure, Sheriff runs everything, and sure, all the politicians are corrupt, but at least things are no different than in any of the other former-Soviet breakaway regions. But alas, yet again, Transnistria isn't so lucky. Transnistria doesn't *just* hold a reputation as a strange corporate kleptocracy, it's not *just* a communist-throwback state, it's known as a hub for organized crime as well. The fall of the Soviet Union and the subsequent mess of shadowy business done in Transnistria have made the region into a haven for smugglers for the better part of three decades.\n\nAt the forefront of Transnistrian smuggling, is the arms trade; Transnistria, and specific ally the smuggling done in and around the small village of Cobasna. Cobasna was home to a massive Soviet weapons depot when the Union collapsed, and surprise surprise, most of the weapons and ammunition that were once stored there, are believed to be gone. And we can't overstate just how massive of a supply this really is; by some estimates, it's the largest weapons depot in all of Europe, with the cumulative power of the tens of thousands of tons of weaponry that are stored there, being enough to rival the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki *combined*.\n\nObviously, that's a hell of a lot of kit, and with such clear intent by the Transnistrian government, the Sheriff corporation, and other actors to make Transnistria into a profitable enterprise, it should be no surprise that the region was less interested in effective arms control than in making a buck. Transnistria's borders are known to be exceptionally porous for those who can pay their way through, and for a cut of the profits, just about any government official can be convinced to look the other way or even actively facilitate the passage of smugglers. Across the Ukrainian border, the situation historically isn't much better, and so, too, could smugglers easily find their way into Moldova, and then through to Romania and the edges of central Europe.\n\nIn fact, this is even how Sheriff got their start, illegally trading alcohol, cigarettes, and food in order to bypass export controls between the former Soviet states and the rest of the world. Like other sub-groups within the Transnistrian smuggling world, Sheriff's early business was largely conducted through the Ukrainian port city of Odessa, which is better known today as a frequent target of Russian attacks on account of the city's major economic significance. Just a stone's throw away from the Moldovan border, Odessa spent decades as a valuable entry and exit point for illegal goods transiting through Eastern Europe, with the port city's own officials historically not against accepting a little bit of cash to ease passage of anything from cigarettes to guns. So popular a smuggling route is Transnistria, that in 2011, the American FBI collaborated with Moldovan authorities to prevent the smuggling of a kilogram of Uranium-235, for potential use in a nuclear or radiological weapon.\n\nUnfortunately for Transnistria's smuggler army, Moldova and Ukraine have worked together to crack down on smuggling in recent years, although calling it a \"crackdown\" at all is mostly just relative to the complete lack of oversight that existed before. Now, smugglers must travel through jointly administered checkpoints under Moldovan and Ukrainian control, where Ukraine, especially, has had a vested interest in shoring up its own security amidst threats from Russia in the lead-up to the current war. Other inquiries from the European Union, the United Nations, and elsewhere have found reason to indicate that arms smuggling in Transnistria may have slowed significantly, or perhaps wasn't such a large problem in the first place. Granted, those claims do lose a bit of their weight when we factor in a system in which a corrupt government, a massive corporation, and arms smugglers are essentially free to collaborate with each other, as well as the Russian military, in order to obscure the flow of illegal goods or hide them underneath seemingly legitimate covers. But if you've been watching at home, waiting for just one thing to be optimistic about…well, let this be it.\n\nAnd just as we build that optimism, we've got to crush it again, specifically when it comes to Transnistria's other smuggling industry: Human trafficking. Tragically, Transnistria is a hotbed for sex trafficking, making use of their somewhat centralized location in the Eastern European smuggling sphere to set up paths for victims between Poland, Russia, Ukraine, and Moldova. Children have not been immune, either, and are suspected of having been trafficked just the same as adult victims, especially when they can be lured away from neglectful homes and families. Transnistria has almost no mechanisms to assist trafficked persons, and the local government has become less and less interested in the issue as time has gone on.\n\n## An Outsize Geopolitical Player\n\nEven though Transnistria still exists largely outside of the view of Western onlookers, it's gained an increasing level of importance in the Eastern European geopolitical sphere in the last few years, owing mostly to Russia's desire to expand its influence in the area. By now, it shouldn't be a surprise that Transnistria is a rather perfect bedfellow for Vladimir Putin's Russia, an area that is more than happy to accept copious Russian aid, follow Russia's general expectations for its policy at home, and, perhaps most importantly, smile and explain to the world just how good a friend Uncle Vlad really is. And it should be even less of a surprise that as Russia has escalated violence into Transnistria's neighbor Ukraine, the small Moldovan breakaway region has seemed more and more like a real asset.\n\nModern-day Moscow considers its alliance with Tiraspol to be a military advantage, but that's certainly not because of Transnistria's own armed forces. With just around 5,000 active-duty troops at any given time, armed with dubious training, just eighteen tanks, and exactly one attack helicopter, Transnistria isn't exactly going to march on Kyiv anytime soon. Instead, they host a contingent of 1,500 Russian soldiers, who are stationed indefinitely in the region with Transnistria's express approval.\n\nThese Russian soldiers operate in two contingents. Roughly five hundred form a so-called peacekeeping force, patrolling the zones between Transnistria and Moldova and providing oversight to a small demilitarized zone, which falls under the control of neither of the opposing governments. The other thousand are there to protect that arms depot we mentioned before, in the village of Cobasna. Situated just a few kilometers from the Ukrainian border, Cobasna alone holds the sort of material and pure firepower that could cause serious problems for Russia, not because anything in that stockpile is particularly advanced, but because there's so damn much of it.\n\nRussia's ongoing presence in Transnistria, means that 1,500 of Russia's own soldiers are stationed relatively far afield from Russia's actual territory, where, in an ideal world, they would focus on maintaining Transnistria's autonomy and keeping those weapons in Cobasna secure. According to the rest of the world, though, these troops are used to menace the sovereign nation of Moldova, threaten invasion into parts of Ukraine that haven't yet been attacked directly with ground forces, and possibly even facilitate the smuggling of weapons and ammunition out of Cobasna, either for military or terrorist purposes. And these troops aren't shy about posturing, either; the larger contingent guarding Cobasna frequently conducts unauthorized training exercises within the demilitarized zone.\n\nLike everyone else in Transnistria, these troops are in something of an odd position; barred from traveling in and out of nearby airports in Ukraine or Moldova, even for years before Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine, and with the Tiraspol airport supporting exactly one singular flight between 1998 and 2012, these Russians are often stationed in Transnistria for many years at a time, often rotating back and forth between the two units multiple times in order to get home. Short of a full airlift, or either Ukraine or Moldova allowing those troops to cross their territory, they aren't likely to go anywhere, and given that Ukraine would almost certainly oppose an evacuation of those troops on direct flights over Ukrainian territory, they now probably couldn't get back to Russia if they wanted to. Instead, they remain as a constant threat, not just pressuring Moldova, but doing their part in a much broader Russian effort to make Moldova, Ukraine, and the entire region unpalatable for NATO.\n\nRussia's current influence in Transnistria goes far beyond just the deployment of its troops, into a realm referred to as \"soft power\"—that is, the use of economic or cultural means by one nation to influence another, rather than invading or strongarming them into compliance. One major example here, and a somewhat unavoidable one, would be Russia's substantial monetary and resource contributions to Transnistria, and giving a lifeline that, even if Transnistria is happy to accept, still has the ability to create and deepen a material dependency that simply can't be forgotten. And the Sheriff corporation, too, is a major avenue for Russia to exert soft power and influence over Transnistria. Viktor Gusan himself is a strong advocate for the set of beliefs known as Ruskiy Mir, which hold that independent nations like Moldova, Georgia, and Ukraine are part of a \"Russian world\", where common roots with a sort of fatherly, benevolent version of Russia take precedence over ideas like independence and sovereignty.\n\nThese ideas are echoed up and down the Transnistrian legislature, the country's military, and even the cities and towns where ordinary Transnistrians try to eke out a living. By Transnistrian regulations, the Russian flag must be flown beside the Transnistrian one in official settings. Publicly, the Transnistrian government espouses a view that sees Russia as the sole guarantor of its continued existence, standing firm against a coalition of Westernizers that includes Moldova, Romania, Europe, and the United States. Fitting with that, Ukraine's efforts to maintain its sovereignty and join NATO represents an effort to encircle Transnistria, cut it off from Russia, and force it to accept a more Westernized way of life. Threats to remove Russia's peacekeeping force, are thus threats to Transnistrian autonomy, just as attempts by Moldovans to work toward reintegration are an insidious form of long-term sabotage. Transnistrians, according to Transnistrians themselves, aren't simply a Moldovan separatist faction at all; they are an inextricably Russian place, that just happens to be somewhat distant from Russia proper.\n\nWith that view so firmly entrenched, economic outreach from Moldova has been largely unsuccessful. Repeating the cycle of past generations, the promise of higher wages in Moldova proper has given an out for people who might not have supported Transnistria's autonomy in general, but left behind an entire world of Transnistrians who are willing to accept lower wages or fewer opportunities in order to preserve the region's culture. As in the years immediately after Moldova declared its sovereignty, this pattern only serves to further isolate Transnistria, where political and business leaders are now even less likely to face push-back for their policies inside their own borders. And Transnistrians' willingness to accept some inconveniences, in the name of their autonomy, doesn't stop there. Consider their willingness to continually trade in Transnistrian currency, entirely eliminating the ability to use digital payments or credit cards or conduct any kind of international business. The same goes for the Transnistrian passport, which, to most people around the world, wouldn't be worth the paper it's printed on…but which, in Transnistria, is a valuable symbol of loyalty to a state that almost nobody else recognizes.\n\nAs a direct result of this loyalty, Transnistria, as well as the Sheriff corporation, have come along willingly on Russia's efforts to first infringe upon, and then invade, their mutual neighbor nation of Ukraine. One of Sheriff's subsidiaries, a telecommunications company called Interdnestrcom, was among the very first to offer service to the isthmus of Crimea after Russia seized and annexed it in 2014, and other Sheriff subsidiaries send textiles, construction equipment, and even luxury food items from Crimea, across Europe, and even as far as the United States. Transnistria also gave Russia a valuable media victory in those first few months of annexation, publicly declaring their own wish to be annexed by Russia, and generally trying to make the whole thing seem like a happy moment for Crimea rather than a violation of the international order.\n\nAnd once the Russian invasion of Ukraine began in earnest, in March of 2022, Transnistria quickly became wrapped up in the violence. Starting in April of that year, no fewer than eight attacks occurred in Transnistria, including a drone attack, instances of Molotov cocktails being thrown at government buildings, and the laying of anti-tank mines that were used to destroy radio antennas. As for who committed those attacks, most of the international community suspects that they were a false-flag attack by Russia, hoping to draw Transnistria closer to Russian hegemony, stir up violent sentiment toward Ukraine, and, if Russia had rolled through Ukraine as it had planned, perhaps to use Transnistria as a staging area for an offensive that could have squashed Moldova as well. Russia, of course, claims that the attack was Ukrainian in origin, but the fact that it targeted relatively inconsequential, symbolic targets, would suggest that it did not come from Ukraine. Put simply, Ukraine is a lot better at sabotage than that.\n\nBut if the attack was a false-flag, it turns out that it may have had a somewhat opposite effect from what Russia intended. In the aftermath, Transnistria's president didn't call for violence against Ukraine or Moldova, or even accuse them directly of having perpetrated the attack. Instead, even in interviews with Russian state media, the president declined to name the group behind the attack, and instead stressed that the attack failed to raise tensions between Transnistria and anybody else. It was a good series of statements for someone in his position, statements that a Russian media organization could have contextualized into a verbal blow against Ukraine…but one where the real subtext seems to be, \"we here in Transnistria would rather not be played.\"\n\nAside from being caught in the crosshairs of one of the more unapologetically expansionist regimes out there, the war in Ukraine has given Transnistria another problem: cutoffs from Russian oil, which, until 2022, Transnistria converted into electricity and sold to Moldova. These electricity sales were no small thing, for the people on either side of the Dniester; up to seventy percent of Moldovan electricity comes from Transnistria, while Transnistria reaps the financial rewards of its sales. But since then, Russia has slashed gas supply to Transnistria, forcing Transnistria to stop selling to Moldova proper. But this, like so many elements of Russian conduct around its invasion of Ukraine, has ended up backfiring; Transnistria's oil shortage forced a closer collaboration between Tiraspol and Chisinau, where Moldova now buys gas from the European Union, sends the EU and Russian gas they've got to Transnistria, and receives it back in the form of electricity.\n\nAt the same time, Moldova has taken steps to criminalize acts of separatism in Transnistria—not to retroactively punish people already living in the breakaway region, but to get ahead of future separatist acts that might drive Moldova and Transnistria further apart. As for who that effects…well, in theory, the ordinary people of Transnistria should be largely immune, while the region's leaders, official and unofficial, are direct targets. The exact effects of this new law are still unknown, but at least in theory, it may be used as a tool to separate the Transnistrian population from their ruling elites. This, in advance of new Moldovan movement toward European Union membership, something that would need to be explained to a Transnistrian public who've spent decades under the assumption that the EU and NATO are a destructive force.\n\nFinally, there's the implications of the war for those Russian troops still stationed in Transnistria. Although they haven't left, and in fact, they're hemmed in by tanks and soldiers on the Ukrainian side of the border, they're subject to the same changing judgment of the Russian military that, well, the entire Russian military is. With Russia's global capacity to intimidate and menace the rest of the world, now looking somewhat diminished, it's an open question as to whether a relatively small force of 1,500 troops will be as much a deterrent for Moldovan pro-Europe action, as they've previously been. Not only that, but if Transnistria ever does seem to grow closer to rejoining Moldova, those 1,500 troops wouldn't just have to contend with Moldovan opposition, but now, Ukrainian troops as well.\n\nAsk Russia what they think about all this, and the answer will most likely be some form of, \"desperate times call for desperate measures\". Early in 2023, documents from Russia's internal security service, the FSB, came to light, in which the FSB laid out a detailed, ten-year plan to destabilize Moldova and prevent it from growing closer to Europe. The document, which seemed to be written in 2021, was focused on increasing Moldovan dependency to Russian gas and blocking Moldova's attempts to grow their influence in Transnistria…but these were goals laid out before the war in Ukraine, before Russia unintentionally forced Moldova and Transnistria to work together to keep the lights on, and before the Russian bear opened its mouth, and was revealed to lack fangs.\n\nThe Russian response to the report was predictable; in the words of Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, \"We are very sorry that the current leadership of Moldova is experiencing completely unjustified and unfounded prejudices against Moscow\". That quote, of course, given a little over a year into an ongoing invasion of Moldova's neighbor. After the report was revealed to the public, the EU and the United States began taking more overt steps in support of Moldova, including more energy assistance, and members of Moldova's opposition Shor Party, a group widely seen as a Russian proxy, have recently been arrested on suspicion that they intended to cause violence and unrest during peaceful protests.\n\nAnd the reasons why all these changes in the rest of Moldova are so important, are because the country may be working toward a Transnistrian end-game, one in which the region has little choice but to come back into the fold. If, and when, Moldova breaks its dependency on Russian energy completely, it will then have a second choice: whether or not to also end its dependency on Transnistrian electricity. If it does, meaning that Moldova would not send its gas to Transnistria for conversion to electricity, then Transnistria will be out in the cold. Its routes to smuggle supplies through Ukraine no longer exist, its economic dependence on Moscow is no longer tenable, and it would, almost certainly, begin the long march toward bankruptcy. If that happens, then Transnistria may have no choice but to deliver itself to Moldova on a silver platter.\n\nThe alternative, is that Moldova may choose to continue converting gas to electricity in Transnistria—but this time, by supplying gas sourced from the EU, the United States, and other friendly partners around the world. Do this, and Transnistria gets to stay afloat, but only because of what would essentially be an unbreakable symbiosis with the rest of Moldova. That economic dependence, Moldova hopes, might lead to a range of other benefits: a decline in power in the Sheriff corporation, an opportunity to give Moldova more leverage in Transnistrian politics, and maybe, just maybe, a real chance at reconciliation.\n\nAnd with Russia gone, with its weird corporate overlords unable to make ends meet for long, this may be the best option left for Transnistria. If they try to go it alone, their future is far from bright; the region suffers from severe brain drain, a situation in which young, educated Transnistrians are enticed away to other countries on the promise of wages that their Transnistrian employers simply cannot match. Its ability to produce essential resources by itself, is negligible in many critical sectors. And put simply, it's too small, with borders too porous, and with a government too weak to self-isolate in the way that, say, North Korea has. In fact, while the number of inhabitants we gave at the start, 450,000, is generally seen as being somewhat reliable, some estimates place the real number of Transnistrians as low as 250,000, just half of what it was in the final days of the Soviet Union. Transnistria, as we speak, is falling apart, and Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Moldova's energy independence, and the departure of Transnistria's youth, might be enough to push the region toward reintegration with Moldova, for good.\n\nSo that's Transnistria, a well-kept secret nestled into Eastern Europe, a place where the world seems almost turned on its head…and that's Transnistria, a small, struggling breakaway region that may well be on its last legs. What the future holds for the Transnistrian people, what it holds for the long legacy of pro-Russian loyalty among the population, and what reintegration with Moldova, and then the West, would mean, it's hard to say…but no matter how all this plays out, it seems abundantly clear that the status quo in Transnistria cannot remain stable for long.\n\n## Key Takeaways\n\n- Transnistria is a breakaway region in Moldova, unrecognized internationally, with a unique blend of Soviet nostalgia and corporate control.\n- The Sheriff corporation dominates Transnistria's economy, controlling major industries and exerting significant political influence.\n- Transnistria faces severe human rights issues, including forced disappearances, torture, and restrictions on free expression and press.\n- The region is a hub for smuggling, particularly arms and human trafficking, with porous borders and corrupt officials facilitating illegal activities.\n- Transnistria's future is uncertain, with potential reintegration into Moldova driven by economic dependencies and geopolitical shifts.\n\n## Frequently Asked Questions\n\n### What is Transnistria?\n\nTransnistria is a breakaway region in Eastern Europe, located within the borders of Moldova. It claims to be an independent country but is not recognized by any United Nations member state. It is known for its unique political and economic situation, including its strong ties to Russia and the influence of the Sheriff corporation.\n\n### What is the population and size of Transnistria?\n\nTransnistria has a population of approximately 465,000 people and covers an area of just over 4,000 square kilometers. It is a narrow strip of land along the eastern border of Moldova, separated by the Dniester River.\n\n### What is the economic situation in Transnistria?\n\nTransnistria's economy is primarily based on the production of steel, textiles, and electricity. The region's GDP is around $1.2 billion USD, which is divided among nearly half a million people. The Sheriff corporation controls a significant portion of the economy, with monopolies in several sectors.\n\n### What is the political structure of Transnistria?\n\nTransnistria is administered as a unitary republic under President Vadim Krasnoselsky and a Supreme Council of 33 members. The region is heavily influenced by Russian interests, and its political leaders often have close ties to Russia.\n\n### What is the role of the Sheriff corporation in Transnistria?\n\nThe Sheriff corporation is a major economic and political force in Transnistria, controlling about 60% of the region's economy. It has monopolies in trade, oil, and media, and its influence extends to various sectors, including football, gas stations, supermarkets, and telecommunications.\n\n### What are the human rights issues in Transnistria?\n\nTransnistria has been reported to have significant human rights abuses, including forced disappearances, torture, dangerous prison conditions, arbitrary detention, judicial corruption, severe restrictions on free expression and the press, and repression against journalists. There are also restrictions on free movement and lack of protection for women and LGBT persons.\n\n### What is the historical background of Transnistria?\n\nTransnistria has a distinct history from the rest of Moldova, with the Dniester River serving as a natural divide. The region was part of the Moldovan Soviet Socialist Republic but maintained a diverse ethnic makeup. In the late 1980s, as Moldova sought independence from the Soviet Union, Transnistria organized separatist movements due to fears of Romanianization.\n\n### What is the role of Russia in Transnistria?\n\nRussia has significant influence in Transnistria, providing economic and military support. There are approximately 1,500 Russian troops stationed in the region, and Russia's soft power extends through economic aid and cultural influence. Transnistria is often seen as a pro-Russian region, with strong ties to Russian interests.\n\n### What is the current geopolitical significance of Transnistria?\n\nTransnistria has gained importance in the Eastern European geopolitical sphere due to Russia's desire to expand its influence. The region is seen as a strategic asset for Russia, providing a base for military operations and a buffer against Western influence. The ongoing conflict in Ukraine has further highlighted Transnistria's geopolitical significance.\n\n### What are the future prospects for Transnistria?\n\nThe future of Transnistria is uncertain, with potential scenarios including reintegration with Moldova, continued dependence on Russia, or further isolation. The region faces economic challenges, brain drain, and political instability, which may push it toward reintegration with Moldova or further dependence on external support.\n\n## Sources\n\n- [Original Places video: Transnistria: The Strangest Place on Earth](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ygSYfJP14o)\n- [https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/29/football/sheriff-tiraspol-stuns-real-madrid-champions-league-spt-intl/index.html](https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/29/football/sheriff-tiraspol-stuns-real-madrid-champions-league-spt-intl/index.html)\n- [https://www.moldova.org/en/the-russian-ammunition-depot-from-cobasna-discussed-against-the-backdrop-of-the-beirut-explosion/](https://www.moldova.org/en/the-russian-ammunition-depot-from-cobasna-discussed-against-the-backdrop-of-the-beirut-explosion/)\n- [https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/06/05/transnistria-isnt-the-smugglers-paradise-it-used-to-be-sheriff-moldova-ukraine-tiraspol/](https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/06/05/transnistria-isnt-the-smugglers-paradise-it-used-to-be-sheriff-moldova-ukraine-tiraspol/)\n- [https://www.rferl.org/a/moldova-sheriff-tiraspol-murky-business/31516518.html](https://www.rferl.org/a/moldova-sheriff-tiraspol-murky-business/31516518.html)\n- [https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20210927-in-separatist-transnistria-sheriff-calls-the-shots](https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20210927-in-separatist-transnistria-sheriff-calls-the-shots)\n- [https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20210927-in-separatist-transnistria-sheriff-calls-the-shots](https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20210927-in-separatist-transnistria-sheriff-calls-the-shots)\n- [https://www.state.gov/reports/2020-country-reports-on-human-rights-practices/moldova/](https://www.state.gov/reports/2020-country-reports-on-human-rights-practices/moldova/)\n- [https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/killing-opposition-leader-moldovas-breakaway-transnistria-region-investigation-101339212](https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/killing-opposition-leader-moldovas-breakaway-transnistria-region-investigation-101339212)\n- [https://freedomhouse.org/sites/default/files/2022-06/fh-pb_17-Informational-Space-in-the-Transnistrian-region_Eng.pdf](https://freedomhouse.org/sites/default/files/2022-06/fh-pb_17-Informational-Space-in-the-Transnistrian-region_Eng.pdf)\n- [https://www.state.gov/reports/2020-country-reports-on-human-rights-practices/moldova/](https://www.state.gov/reports/2020-country-reports-on-human-rights-practices/moldova/)\n- [https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/9/29/moldova-transnistria-fc-sheriff-shock-real-madrid-champions-league](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/9/29/moldova-transnistria-fc-sheriff-shock-real-madrid-champions-league)\n- [https://apnews.com/article/soccer-sports-la-liga-major-league-soccer-moldova-37bbc881812396e4a6f1a1fa690ab316](https://apnews.com/article/soccer-sports-la-liga-major-league-soccer-moldova-37bbc881812396e4a6f1a1fa690ab316)\n- [https://www.dw.com/en/sheriff-tiraspol-the-champions-league-club-without-a-country-but-now-in-dreamland/a-59177975](https://www.dw.com/en/sheriff-tiraspol-the-champions-league-club-without-a-country-but-now-in-dreamland/a-59177975)\n- [https://www.amnesty.org/en/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/eur590022007en.pdf](https://www.amnesty.org/en/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/eur590022007en.pdf)\n- [https://ocindex.net/country/moldova](https://ocindex.net/country/moldova)\n- [https://www.omct.org/en/resources/blog/transnistria-human-rights-in-the-shadow-of-football](https://www.omct.org/en/resources/blog/transnistria-human-rights-in-the-shadow-of-football)\n- [https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/transnistria-communism-never-died/](https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/transnistria-communism-never-died/)\n- [https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-18284837](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-18284837)\n- [https://origins.osu.edu/read/transnistria-history-behind-russian-backed-region?language_content_entity=en](https://origins.osu.edu/read/transnistria-history-behind-russian-backed-region?language_content_entity=en)\n- [https://www.wired.com/2016/03/meet-people-transnistria-stuck-time-soviet-country-doesnt-exist/](https://www.wired.com/2016/03/meet-people-transnistria-stuck-time-soviet-country-doesnt-exist/)\n- [https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20200205-celebrating-a-nation-that-doesnt-exist](https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20200205-celebrating-a-nation-that-doesnt-exist)\n- [https://www.cnn.com/2015/10/07/politics/fbi-helped-thwart-nuclear-smuggling-plot-in-moldova/index.html](https://www.cnn.com/2015/10/07/politics/fbi-helped-thwart-nuclear-smuggling-plot-in-moldova/index.html)\n- [https://dra.american.edu/islandora/object/0809capstones:204/datastream/PDF/view](https://dra.american.edu/islandora/object/0809capstones:204/datastream/PDF/view)\n- [https://www.state.gov/reports/2022-trafficking-in-persons-report/moldova/](https://www.state.gov/reports/2022-trafficking-in-persons-report/moldova/)\n- [https://globalsecurityreview.com/transnistria-no-longer-illegal-trade-hub/](https://globalsecurityreview.com/transnistria-no-longer-illegal-trade-hub/)\n- [https://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/28/world/europe/28ukraine.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/28/world/europe/28ukraine.html)\n- [https://www.usmcu.edu/Outreach/Marine-Corps-University-Press/MCU-Journal/Journal-of-Advanced-Military-Studies-SI-2022/Unrecognized-Republic-Recognizable-Consequences-Russian-Troops-in-Frozen-Transnistria/](https://www.usmcu.edu/Outreach/Marine-Corps-University-Press/MCU-Journal/Journal-of-Advanced-Military-Studies-SI-2022/Unrecognized-Republic-Recognizable-Consequences-Russian-Troops-in-Frozen-Transnistria/)\n- [https://origins.osu.edu/read/transnistria-history-behind-russian-backed-region?language_content_entity=en](https://origins.osu.edu/read/transnistria-history-behind-russian-backed-region?language_content_entity=en)\n- [https://carnegieendowment.org/politika/89731](https://carnegieendowment.org/politika/89731)\n- [https://balkaninsight.com/2023/04/21/russian-troop-movements-in-transnistria-alarm-moldova/](https://balkaninsight.com/2023/04/21/russian-troop-movements-in-transnistria-alarm-moldova/)\n- [https://www.dw.com/en/will-the-war-in-ukraine-spell-the-end-of-transnistria/a-64363639#:~:text=The%20resulting%20pro%2DRussia%20breakaway,Moldova's%20eastern%20border%20with%20Ukraine](https://www.dw.com/en/will-the-war-in-ukraine-spell-the-end-of-transnistria/a-64363639#:~:text=The%20resulting%20pro%2DRussia%20breakaway,Moldova's%20eastern%20border%20with%20Ukraine)\n- [https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/16/europe/russia-moldova-secret-document-intl-cmd/index.html](https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/16/europe/russia-moldova-secret-document-intl-cmd/index.html)\n- [https://www.reuters.com/world/us-help-moldova-fight-russias-destabilization-efforts-2023-03-10/](https://www.reuters.com/world/us-help-moldova-fight-russias-destabilization-efforts-2023-03-10/)\n- [https://www.rferl.org/a/31725278.html](https://www.rferl.org/a/31725278.html)\n- [https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/u-s-sanctions-russia-backed-actors-accused-of-trying-to-destabilize-moldova](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/u-s-sanctions-russia-backed-actors-accused-of-trying-to-destabilize-moldova)\n- [https://www.dw.com/en/moldova-pm-greatest-threats-relate-to-energy-security/a-63950354](https://www.dw.com/en/moldova-pm-greatest-threats-relate-to-energy-security/a-63950354)\n- [Hero image source](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/83/Popencu%2C_Transnistria%2C_Moldavia%2C_2023-11-01%2C_DD_15.jpg) by Diego Delso / openverse, by-sa.\n\n## Related Coverage"
url: https://places.site/article/transnistria-strangest-place-on-earth.md
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datePublished: 2026-07-01
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---

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Nestled into a faraway corner of Eastern Europe, in a quiet, sleepy part of the world where borscht flows like wine and vodka flows like vodka, you'll find the small, landlocked country of Moldova. Nestled into the crook of Ukraine's arm to the north, south, and east, and resting happily beside Romania to the west, Moldova is the sort of place that most people wouldn't think about once in the span of a year. It's not a major or even a minor geopolitical player, it's got hardly two and a half million people to its name, and its history, as a former SSR of the Soviet Union, could be cobbled together relatively easily using excerpts of the histories of all the nations around it.

But Moldova's got a secret, a small, well-hidden pocket of the country that claims it isn't Moldova at all. Known as Transnistria, sprawled across a narrow strip of land running up and down the majority of Moldova's eastern edge, this breakaway region claims that it's a country all its own, despite not being recognized by a single nation on Earth. And somehow, in Transnistria's case, its breakaway status manages to be one of the less-weird things about it. From a massive corporate monolith that seems to rule the whole country, to a culture that still idolizes Soviet culture decades after the rest of the region left it behind, to its geopolitical relevance both as a smugglers' haven and as a Russian proxy, Transnistria might well be the strangest place on Earth—and it's Transnistria that we'll be visiting today.

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<!-- aeo:section start="transnistrian-fundamentals" -->
## Transnistrian Fundamentals

Before we dive in on all the weirdness that is Transnistria, let's start with the basics to figure out just what sort of place we're dealing with. Transnistria boasts a population of some 465,000 people, spread across an area just over four thousand square kilometers, under three times the land area of Greater London, but built in a valley some two hundred kilometers long with a width of just a few kilometers in some areas, it's one of the more interesting geographical anomalies of the world. The region stretches across the bank of the Dniester River, separating it from Moldova, and Transnistria's own name even reflects that fact—trans-nistria is an anglicization of trans-Dneister, meaning, beyond the Dneister River. This simple geographic separation is one of a few reasons why Transnistria considers itself as an entity apart from Moldova, but we'll get into the specifics of how that works shortly.

The Transnistrian capital city, a small regional hub called Tiraspol, makes up a little less than a third of the country's population. The breakaway region is administered as a unitary republic, under President Vadim Krasnoselsky and a Supreme Council made up of 33 members, most of whom share very close ties with international interests in Russia. Economically, Transnistria gets by mostly on its production of steel and textiles, as well as electricity, and although there's a *lot* more about its economy that we'll be getting into shortly, suffice for now to say that the region's total GDP, a hair over 1.2 billion dollars US, does not go very far when it's divided among nearly half a million people. Transnistria trades in its own Transnistrian ruble, a currency that can't be used or exchanged anywhere else on Earth except in a few bus stations and shops in nearby parts of Moldova, and, predictably, the currency has devalued quite a bit with time.

In keeping with its status as a sort of waypoint within the former Soviet bloc, the region is quite diverse, with about a quarter of the population being ethnic Russians, about a third being Ukrainians, and about a third being Moldovans and Romanians. Linguistically, too, the area is a bit of an Eastern European melting pot, although Eastern Orthodox Christianity exerts a controlling influence among Transnistria's religious sects. Internationally, Transnistria is recognized by only three other meaningful entities, all of whom are their own breakaway states: Abkhazia and South Ossetia in the country of Georgia, and Artsakh on the territory of Azerbaijan. But when it comes to the internationally recognized countries in the area, particularly Ukraine, Moldova, and Russia, they most certainly know that Transnistria exists, even if they don't entertain Transnistrian claims to independence.

Now, even from this small snapshot of Transnistria, a few things should immediately become clear. On the grand scheme, we are dealing with a region that, even if it were a country, would hardly command much attention on its own. In terms of population, it's roughly as populous as Belize, the Bahamas, or Iceland, countries that typically are only brought up internationally as a vacation destination, and with no stunning beaches or volcanic tundra to explore, Transnistria doesn't even have that going for it.

What it does have, are a number of characteristics that turn it into a very insular place, both intentionally and unintentionally. Just the fact that it's separated from the rest of Moldova by a river, nestled into its own valley, isn't a half-bad starting point, but add the use of its own currency, add an ethnic makeup that looks nothing like the rest of Moldova, and add a ruling government that claims it isn't part of Moldova at all, and what you get, is a place where a whole lot of rules and norms about the way the world works are going to fall away. In a hermetically sealed environment like that, things are going to get weird, and they start, with an organization known as Sheriff.

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<!-- aeo:section start="life-under-sheriff" -->
## Life Under Sheriff

On Tuesday, September 28, 2021, the Spanish football club Real Madrid marched onto the Champions League pitch, for a match they could win with their eyes closed and both hands tied behind their back. Their opponents, that day, were a team called Sheriff Tiraspol, hailing from, and bearing the name, of Transnistria's capital city, and to hear the entire world tell it, Sheriff Tiraspol was going to collapse in tears the second that any player from Real Madrid so much as breathed in their direction. Founded in 1997, representing a tiny stretch of land that nobody had ever heard of, Sheriff Tiraspol's players looked for all the world like a granny who'd found her way into a black-metal concert instead of the knitting circle next door. Metadata company Gracenote gave Sheriff Tiraspol just a 1.4% chance at winning the game before it began, with their team, ranked 175th in the league, guaranteed to take a loss to third-ranked Madrid and be patted on their heads for trying their best.

Except Sheriff Tiraspol didn't lose, that day, and they didn't even draw. In one of the most unlikely sporting upsets in history, the little team from Transnistria beat Real Madrid two goals to one, and completely shut the Spaniards out from scoring in open play. It was the sort of performance that required either Real Madrid's team to have all suffered a head trauma the day before, or required Sheriff Tiraspol to be guided by the hand of God. But, then, that latter option might not have been so unlikely after all, because the football team Sheriff Tiraspol, like just about everything else in Transnistria, belongs to the Sheriff company—and in everyday Transnistrian life, Sheriff is about as close to a deity as anyone could get.

Second only to the economic power of Transnistria's state-owned Moldova Steel Works, Sheriff exerts extreme economic power over this small, breakaway region, even though other than their football team's occasional upset wins, they're all but unheard-of in the rest of the world. Sheriff rules Transnistria with all the monopolistic authority of an Industrial-Age company town, with Sheriff-branded gas stations, supermarkets, television, mobile-phone networks, literary publishing, alcohol, baked goods, advertising, and construction, not to mention football, all under the company's direct control. All told, Sheriff commands a hold on some sixty percent of the entire Transnistrian economy, with total monopolies on several elements of the regional economy, specifically trade, oil, and media.

And when we say Sheriff rules Transnistria, we aren't kidding. Co-created by a Moldovan-Russian billionaire named Viktor Gushan, who was known as "the Sheriff" during his time serving as a member of the KGB—and, no, we're not making that supervillain origin story up—Sheriff was exempted from customs duties early in Transnistria's political history, and they exert such strong control over Transnistria's only political party that they're functionally a political arm to ensure that Sheriff stays in business. So deep are Sheriff's ties all up and down Transnistria, that the region's former President, a man named Yevgeny Shevchuk, had to flee Transnistria after his term ended because Gushan and Sheriff were allegedly trying to assassinate him, as retaliation for Shevchuk having called Sheriff's state corruption out during his time in office.

Depending on who you ask, Gushan is often considered the de-facto leader of Transnistria, pulling strings in the dominant political party, Obnovleniem which has swelled with his support since the year 2000. The leaders of the party are generally quite amenable to Sheriff, and vice versa, and the state directly pays out its own budget to Sheriff and its subsidiary companies. Controls over the products imported to Transnistria overwhelmingly favor Sheriff's business interests, ensuring that, say, Sheriff-brand Vodka doesn't have to compete with Cousin Igor's Very Good Vodkadrink, or that anybody requesting a permit to open a non-Sheriff petrol station has their application, shall we say, lost in the mail. Today, Sheriff's five-pointed star is all but ubiquitous in Transnistria, unavoidable when walking down a major street in Tiraspol or the region's other small cities, and watching from across the Dniester, Moldova is basically unable to intervene. The nation has attempted to bring non-Sheriff Transnistrian businesses into a greater partnership with the rest of the Moldovan state, and tried to get them access to the markets of the European Union, a move that has certainly had some effect, but in many ways, this is but a small erosion away from the immense power that Sheriff holds.

And it's important to note, here, that Sheriff's rise is widely understood to have been a brutal piece of business. Far more than simply buying up factories and undercutting competitors, Sheriff is believed to have played a very active role in the real violence of Transnistria's early years of independence, with the company's enforcers killing, and being killed by, a long list of rival business leaders who attempted to stand in their way. As Transnistria's former Foreign Minister, Valery Litskay, put it in an interview with Agence France-Presse, "If you go to our cemeteries, you will see whole alleys of bandits". As Litskay explains it, the bandits who survived those early wars, and fought on the side of Sheriff, are now better known as police officers, wearing a thin veil of legitimacy in order to propagate their business empire further.

But just as insidious as Sheriff's dystopic hold over the Transnistrian economy, are its instruments of social control. Now, in order to have this conversation at all, we've got to work inside a base assumption that by and large, the actions of the Transnistrian government are tightly interrelated to the goals and objectives of the Sheriff corporation, but when we take the two together, Transnistria's disturbing patterns of human rights abuses are cast in a whole other light. As for what those human rights abuses are, we'll just pull a few of the highlights from a 2020 report by the US State Department: Forced disappearances by the authorities, confirmed cases of torture and degradation by the authorities, dangerous prison conditions where prisoners risk death while incarcerated, arbitrary detention, judicial corruption, severe restrictions on free expression and the press, active repression against journalists, online privacy violations and severe content restrictions, a nearly-complete set of restrictions on free movement, a lack of will to investigate violence against women or LGBT persons, laws against same-sex sexual contact between consenting adults, and, as a cherry on top, child labor.

And when an ordinary Transnistrian runs afoul of Sheriff, or is compelled to work in dangerous conditions on Sheriff's behalf, the company is highly unlikely to face any accountability for what may come next. In one example, a businessman named Vadim Ceban was found dead near his home in Transnistria on June 10, 2020, beaten to death with a shovel. Ceban had openly criticizes the Transnistrian government, fought back against Sheriff's economy, and posted an image in a Transnistrian Facebook group with the words, "Sheriff Repent". And in a similar case, earlier this year in July of 2023, a man named Oleg Khorzhan was murdered in his home in Transnistria for unknown reasons. Khorzhan, the head of the Transnistrian Communist Party, was Transnistria's last surviving opposition leader prior to his death. Journalists who have attempted to expose abusive or unhealthy work conditions at Sheriff's factories have been threatened and fined, and members of Transnistrian militias, often directly loyal to Sheriff, operate with impunity across the region.

And it doesn't stop there. Defectors from the Transnistrian armed forces have been disappeared when returning to visit family, and ordinary citizens have been detained and disappeared, often without reason. Prisoners who've done time in Transnistria have reported being starved, drugged, and exposed to prisoners who are actively infected with tuberculosis, or having medical access withheld after being beaten by their guards. Victims of domestic violence in Transnistria have basically no recourse unless they receive broken bones or a concussion, with anything less, seen as only an administrative offense. Even children have not been spared; in one incident at an orphanage for children with special needs, many such children were beaten and dunked into washbasins against their will as forms of corporal punishment. And, as we've always got to note when discussing parts of the world that restrict press access and obscure the truth of their situation, these are just the incidents we know about. We can all but guarantee that there is more, and quite possibly worse, going on that we may never know about.

Then, we've got to discuss the authority Transnistria exerts over its own media environment. On the one hand, writers who attempt to expose the realities of the situation in Transnistria are typically greeted with outright retaliation; one writer named Larisa Calic, who attempted to expose violent hazing within the Transnistrian armed forces, was charged with extremism and forced to go into hiding. Another, a Communist Party leader named Alexandr Samonii, suffered the same fate after criticizing the regime on social media. Other Transnistrians have received prison sentences for insulting public officials, and journalists in the country have taken to self-censorship, simply in order to keep their heads.

On the other hand, there's the narratives that Transnistria and the Sheriff corporation do have control over. Transnistria has two media organizations: the state-run Public Agency for Telecommunication, and, you guessed it, Sheriff Holding. Sheriff also controls Transnistria's largest Internet service provider, and has been accused of trying to eliminate all other ISPs in the region. Both the government and Sheriff crank out a long line of generally pro-Russia, generally pro-Sheriff, and generally anti-Moldova propaganda pieces, in both print and television. Ukrainian, Moldovan, and European media can be accessed, including television channels, but they require extra fees to access, while Transnistrian and Russian media do not. In a country where GDP per capita is the equivalent of under 2,600 dollars US, it's not hard to imagine that any free media might quickly become unaffordable.

But even despite the incredible depth of Sheriff's hold over Transnistria, and the outright dystopian environment that Sheriff and the Transnistrian government have created, the people of Transnistria still maintain a presence in the rest of Moldova. Those who hold a Transnistrian passport can travel to the rest of the country with relative ease, many Transnistrians hold jobs across Moldova, and many extended families have members on both sides of the regional dividing line. Sheriff Tiraspol competes against the rest of Moldova's football teams, where they've won league titles in twenty of the last twenty-two seasons by buying a better roster of players than anyone else in Moldova could even hope to achieve. Sadly for the players of Sheriff Tiraspol, very few people actually show up to watch the games anymore, given that their outcomes are functionally preordained, but, well, that doesn't matter much when the football team exists to launder massive amounts of money…allegedly. Far more important to Sheriff, in any case, is the degree to which Sheriff Tiraspol, Transnistrian currency and passports, and the Sheriff conglomeration's hand in many, many industries, afford them the leverage to operate with impunity inside Transnistria, while the rest of Moldova looks on, stuck with a neighbor that might as well be from another world.

<!-- aeo:section end="life-under-sheriff" -->
<!-- aeo:section start="history-of-a-breakaway-state" -->
## History of a Breakaway State

In its current state, Transnistria is a place weighed down by Mafia-style corporatism, isolated and cut off from most of the world…but in many ways, the seeds for its current state were planted long ago, by a series of decisions made deep in the heart of the Soviet Union.

Transnistria has been distinct from the area now known as Moldova for quite a long time, with the Dniester River forming a natural divide between its west bank, a Romanian-speaking population, and its east bank, a Ukrainian-speaking population. Of course, this is something of an oversimplification compared to the real complexities of that time, but we'll hold off on a real lesson in 17th-century Bessarabian history today. The first real point of interest here, came in the late 18th and 19th centuries, as migration of Romanian-speakers to the far side of the Dniester began to increase, and lay the groundwork for the much more multi-ethnic Transnistria we still see today.

By the time that the Russian Empire more-or-less evolved into the Soviet Union, the place we now call Transnistria was already somewhat diverse, and it was quite clearly distinct from its western neighbor Moldova, then called Bessarabia. But in 1940, both Bessarabia and Transnistria were lumped into the so-called Moldovan Soviet Socialist Republic, with few, if any steps taken to address the divides between the larger region and the smaller one.

This maneuver was not unintentional by the Soviet Union's decision-makers, and it wasn't the only case of such a decision being made. The Soviets had a long history of consolidating their Soviet Socialist Republics, functionally the equivalent of states or provinces under the Soviet umbrella, in ways that integrated smaller regions that were either disinterested in unifying with the rest of the people inside their Republic, or outright opposed to the idea. The ramifications of this choice have played out again and again in recent years, between Azerbaijan and its Nagorno-Karabakh region, Georgia and its South Ossetian and Abkhazian regions, and in the Caucasus regions of Russia, where separatist movements and both violent and nonviolent resistance to a centralized authority have become commonplace. But back in the days of the Soviets, that was largely the point; after all, how could a Soviet Socialist Republic begin a coordinated uprising against the Union, when it couldn't even get its own inhabitants to live together peacefully?

Starting in the 1920s, the Soviet Union took active steps to create a Moldovan identity that could stand separately from the influence of nearby Romania. Historically speaking, Moldova's roots were largely Romanian, and pre-Moldovan Bessarabia was considered to be part of Romania outright. But with Bessarabia sequestered under Russian rule for most of the years that Romania went about establishing itself as a nation-state, the Soviet Union was keen on leveraging those existing divides in order to consolidate modern-day Moldova under the Soviet umbrella. With the help of the Union, a Moldovan language was developed, using the same Cyrillic alphabet that Russia does, and a broader spirit of Moldovan identity, and even nationalism, was very intentionally fostered. As young Moldovan nationalists began to grow up and pursue political careers, the Soviet Union saw to it that they could find their way into real power, starting a sort of snowball effect that saw that Moldovan spirit really take hold.

But Transnistria, already distinct from the rest of Moldova, experienced an opposite phenomenon. Between an influx of Russian laborers and immigrants enticed to the region by jobs in heavy industry, a great many ethnic Ukrainians who had already made Transnistria their home, and many ethnic Moldovan-Romanians with closer ties to Moldova proper—including some who had been getting in on pro-Moldovan movements—the area diversified, largely losing its appetite for nationalism of any sort. Moldovan, Ukrainian, Russian, and Romanian each became perfectly acceptable languages in the area, rates of intermarriage picked up, and while the region didn't exactly stand opposed to the rest of the Moldovan SSR, it stood…well, perhaps a bit apathetic.

And when, in the late 1980s, the rest of the Moldovan SSR began exploring the idea of independence from the Soviet Union, in favor of a return to closer ties with Romania and the establishment of a sovereign Moldovan state, that news wasn't received well in Transnistria. Fears of so-called "Romanianization" only picked up as Moldovan nationalists adopted the Romanian tricolor flag, and advocated reforming Moldova's linguistic landscape to prefer Romanian as a state language. In response, Transnistrians organized into labor collectives and led strikes against Romanianization, emphasizing the damage it might do to the more multicultural communities and families that were, by now, well-established on the other side of the Dnieper. Some of Moldova's strongest Transnistrian opponents, were themselves ethnic Moldovan-Romanians, who argued that too strong a lean into Romanian language and culture would disadvantage their friends, neighbors, and even members of their own families. In the words of one Transnistrian named Anatolii Tabak, whose family was just one of thousands like it in the region, "I am a Moldovan, my wife is Russian, my kids study in Ukraine. I have understood Russian my whole life. I believe that Russian and Moldovan should have the same rights." For someone in that situation, it's not hard to imagine how the positions of the Moldovan nationalist movement, especially some hardliners who advocated for the expulsion of Russians and Ukrainians from Moldova entirely, might have been a beast worth fighting.

Now, sitting in the mid-2020s, it's easy to look back and see how a Transnistria that chose to keep its ties with Russian language and culture would become an ideal target for the modern Russian regime to exploit, and we'll absolutely be getting to more of that later, but for the Transnistrians of 1989 and 1990, these concerns didn't even register. Their crisis was much more of an existential one, and in the face of Moldovan policies that would have infringed upon what many Transnistrians saw as ethnolinguistic equality, the Transnistrian population decided to look toward their own autonomous future instead of integrating with their neighbor.

First, this took the form of political separatism, in a series of referendums that established the Pridnestrovian Moldovian Soviet Socialist Republic—or, if you'd like less of a mouthful, they established Transnistria as its own autonomous entity, loyal to the USSR. And once the Soviet Union itself began to collapse, Tiraspol declared Transnistria to be an independent entity, despite a lack of recognition from the neighboring Moldovan capital of Chisinau. The situation escalated further and further, and by March of 1992, it had deteriorated into open war.

But this is where things began to get messy for Transnistria, on account of the Russian 14th Army. Although they'd already been stationed in Transnistria for the last several decades, the 14th Army had largely stood by while the region's referendums took place, but when war broke out, they saw fit to intervene on the side of Transnistria. According to Russia's defense minister at the time, this was not an approved action; instead, all accounts pointed to those Russian soldiers deciding to take up arms of their own volition, in defense of a region where many had established their own homes and families.

With the 14th Army's help, Moldova and Transnistria fought to a stalemate by July of 1992, and a ceasefire agreement essentially made Transnistria its own autonomous region—not a recognized sovereign state, but about as close to it as a breakaway region can be without a seat at the UN. Transnistria joined the growing list of so-called frozen conflicts across the former Soviet bloc, and Moldova settled into a generally tolerant orientation toward Transnistria, largely because of a lack of any other options.

But the chaos and uncertainty of the Transnistrian war had soured things significantly in Transnistria by the time a ceasefire was agreed, with the idea of Transnistrian multiculturalism giving way to Russian nationalism. For decades prior to the outbreak of war, Russian-language publications of Transnistria had a nasty habit of vilifying the idea of Romanian influence in the region, telling fabricated stories in which Russian- or Ukrainan-speakers would lose their Slavic identity and their linguistic heritage upon exposure to Romanian ideals and culture, and when it came time for the Slavic peoples of Transnistria to take up arms against ethnic Romanian-Moldovans, that sort of pre-established rhetoric was brought to the forefront. On the one hand, it was used to invigorate ethnic Russians and Ukrainians to fight longer and harder against Moldova, but on the other hand, it substantively changed the way that Transnistria worked. If the enemy, so to speak, was Moldova, then Transnistria shifted into an allegiance toward what they perceived to be a bulwark against Moldovan nationalism: Russian nationalism.

In the following years, the Russian language evolved into Transnistria's de-facto state language, and though Ukrainian and Moldovan are still recognized as official languages in Transnistria today, neither have been used in some time. Most schools in Transnistria now educate their students in Russian, and although Russian influence is balanced out somewhat by the Transnistrian government's effort to fund Moldovan-language media, it's not hard to see which language ultimately "won". Predictably, this sort of perceived Russification in Transnistria only drove the rest of Moldova further away, and that increased hostility and skepticism from Moldova, only proved the point of pro-Russian Transnistrians. Those in Transnistria who opposed the shift toward Russian, largely moved westward to Moldova proper, a sort of ideological self-sorting that has only led Transnistria to become even more isolated.

Once that isolation really set in, Transnistria began to devolve, not loudly or explosively or with any sort of real civil war, but in a slow, quiet attrition in which early attempts at a strong state system were worn down by a number of outside interests. With Russia able to support such a friendly breakaway region, even as it rested right on newly-independent Moldova's doorstep, Russian state and non-state influence began to seep further and further into the country's foundation. Corporate interests, like those of the Sheriff conglomerate, began to consolidate Transnistrian business holdings, while as economic hardship and resource scarcity began to set in, Russia started to offer more and more in the way of financial and economic support. After all, the money it takes to run Transnistria is roughly the amount that a single Russian oligarch has in their pockets, and when that small sum is compared against the benefits of having a loyal, pro-Russian region in that part of the world, there's no real reason not to spend that little bit of coin. With greater and greater Russian influence, has come a greater and greater fondness for Russia within Transnistria, and within just a few years, that fondness had transitioned into political control of Transnistria by politicians and multimillionaires who've been more than happy to do Russia's bidding.

Where that leaves Transnistria now, is as something resembling a Russian exclave, one where nostalgia for the Soviet Union is not just allowed, but actively fostered in many cases. Transnistria's flag is the only one left in the entire world featuring communism's traditional hammer-and-sickle, and it's widely described as existing in some sort of Soviet-era time warp. A statue of Vladimir Lenin glares imposingly outward from the steps of the parliament building in Tiraspol, and images of Russian President Vladimir Putin are commonplace, not just in private citizens' homes but in municipal and federal government offices as well. The city features a Stalinist Palace of Culture, and a Soviet T-34 tank left as a monument to victory in World War II. All this, even though by any real measure, Transnistria isn't communist at all. Vladimir Lenin, just by example, would probably sooner have vomited at the idea of Sheriff's control over the region than endorsed it. This sort of pro-communist imagery in Transnistria isn't exactly a policy position, or at least not in any meaningful way; instead, it's the functional equivalent of wearing a Che Guevara shirt while enjoying all the perks of downtown Brooklyn. All the elements of Soviet-style state control are still present—the restrictions on personal and civil rights, the punitive detention and disappearances, the blatant state propaganda, those sorts of things. But it's a status within Soviet and Russian hegemony, a heritage of worker solidarity, and a culture of Transnistrian pride that Transnistria is working to memorialize, not the Leninist vision that led to the rise of the Soviet Union in the first place.

<!-- aeo:section end="history-of-a-breakaway-state" -->
<!-- aeo:section start="smugglers-paradise" -->
## Smugglers' Paradise

With Transnistria's complex history in mind, one might at least hope that the region could find some semblance of peace under Russia's influence, where, sure, Sheriff runs everything, and sure, all the politicians are corrupt, but at least things are no different than in any of the other former-Soviet breakaway regions. But alas, yet again, Transnistria isn't so lucky. Transnistria doesn't *just* hold a reputation as a strange corporate kleptocracy, it's not *just* a communist-throwback state, it's known as a hub for organized crime as well. The fall of the Soviet Union and the subsequent mess of shadowy business done in Transnistria have made the region into a haven for smugglers for the better part of three decades.

At the forefront of Transnistrian smuggling, is the arms trade; Transnistria, and specific ally the smuggling done in and around the small village of Cobasna. Cobasna was home to a massive Soviet weapons depot when the Union collapsed, and surprise surprise, most of the weapons and ammunition that were once stored there, are believed to be gone. And we can't overstate just how massive of a supply this really is; by some estimates, it's the largest weapons depot in all of Europe, with the cumulative power of the tens of thousands of tons of weaponry that are stored there, being enough to rival the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki *combined*.

Obviously, that's a hell of a lot of kit, and with such clear intent by the Transnistrian government, the Sheriff corporation, and other actors to make Transnistria into a profitable enterprise, it should be no surprise that the region was less interested in effective arms control than in making a buck. Transnistria's borders are known to be exceptionally porous for those who can pay their way through, and for a cut of the profits, just about any government official can be convinced to look the other way or even actively facilitate the passage of smugglers. Across the Ukrainian border, the situation historically isn't much better, and so, too, could smugglers easily find their way into Moldova, and then through to Romania and the edges of central Europe.

In fact, this is even how Sheriff got their start, illegally trading alcohol, cigarettes, and food in order to bypass export controls between the former Soviet states and the rest of the world. Like other sub-groups within the Transnistrian smuggling world, Sheriff's early business was largely conducted through the Ukrainian port city of Odessa, which is better known today as a frequent target of Russian attacks on account of the city's major economic significance. Just a stone's throw away from the Moldovan border, Odessa spent decades as a valuable entry and exit point for illegal goods transiting through Eastern Europe, with the port city's own officials historically not against accepting a little bit of cash to ease passage of anything from cigarettes to guns. So popular a smuggling route is Transnistria, that in 2011, the American FBI collaborated with Moldovan authorities to prevent the smuggling of a kilogram of Uranium-235, for potential use in a nuclear or radiological weapon.

Unfortunately for Transnistria's smuggler army, Moldova and Ukraine have worked together to crack down on smuggling in recent years, although calling it a "crackdown" at all is mostly just relative to the complete lack of oversight that existed before. Now, smugglers must travel through jointly administered checkpoints under Moldovan and Ukrainian control, where Ukraine, especially, has had a vested interest in shoring up its own security amidst threats from Russia in the lead-up to the current war. Other inquiries from the European Union, the United Nations, and elsewhere have found reason to indicate that arms smuggling in Transnistria may have slowed significantly, or perhaps wasn't such a large problem in the first place. Granted, those claims do lose a bit of their weight when we factor in a system in which a corrupt government, a massive corporation, and arms smugglers are essentially free to collaborate with each other, as well as the Russian military, in order to obscure the flow of illegal goods or hide them underneath seemingly legitimate covers. But if you've been watching at home, waiting for just one thing to be optimistic about…well, let this be it.

And just as we build that optimism, we've got to crush it again, specifically when it comes to Transnistria's other smuggling industry: Human trafficking. Tragically, Transnistria is a hotbed for sex trafficking, making use of their somewhat centralized location in the Eastern European smuggling sphere to set up paths for victims between Poland, Russia, Ukraine, and Moldova. Children have not been immune, either, and are suspected of having been trafficked just the same as adult victims, especially when they can be lured away from neglectful homes and families. Transnistria has almost no mechanisms to assist trafficked persons, and the local government has become less and less interested in the issue as time has gone on.

<!-- aeo:section end="smugglers-paradise" -->
<!-- aeo:section start="an-outsize-geopolitical-player" -->
## An Outsize Geopolitical Player

Even though Transnistria still exists largely outside of the view of Western onlookers, it's gained an increasing level of importance in the Eastern European geopolitical sphere in the last few years, owing mostly to Russia's desire to expand its influence in the area. By now, it shouldn't be a surprise that Transnistria is a rather perfect bedfellow for Vladimir Putin's Russia, an area that is more than happy to accept copious Russian aid, follow Russia's general expectations for its policy at home, and, perhaps most importantly, smile and explain to the world just how good a friend Uncle Vlad really is. And it should be even less of a surprise that as Russia has escalated violence into Transnistria's neighbor Ukraine, the small Moldovan breakaway region has seemed more and more like a real asset.

Modern-day Moscow considers its alliance with Tiraspol to be a military advantage, but that's certainly not because of Transnistria's own armed forces. With just around 5,000 active-duty troops at any given time, armed with dubious training, just eighteen tanks, and exactly one attack helicopter, Transnistria isn't exactly going to march on Kyiv anytime soon. Instead, they host a contingent of 1,500 Russian soldiers, who are stationed indefinitely in the region with Transnistria's express approval.

These Russian soldiers operate in two contingents. Roughly five hundred form a so-called peacekeeping force, patrolling the zones between Transnistria and Moldova and providing oversight to a small demilitarized zone, which falls under the control of neither of the opposing governments. The other thousand are there to protect that arms depot we mentioned before, in the village of Cobasna. Situated just a few kilometers from the Ukrainian border, Cobasna alone holds the sort of material and pure firepower that could cause serious problems for Russia, not because anything in that stockpile is particularly advanced, but because there's so damn much of it.

Russia's ongoing presence in Transnistria, means that 1,500 of Russia's own soldiers are stationed relatively far afield from Russia's actual territory, where, in an ideal world, they would focus on maintaining Transnistria's autonomy and keeping those weapons in Cobasna secure. According to the rest of the world, though, these troops are used to menace the sovereign nation of Moldova, threaten invasion into parts of Ukraine that haven't yet been attacked directly with ground forces, and possibly even facilitate the smuggling of weapons and ammunition out of Cobasna, either for military or terrorist purposes. And these troops aren't shy about posturing, either; the larger contingent guarding Cobasna frequently conducts unauthorized training exercises within the demilitarized zone.

Like everyone else in Transnistria, these troops are in something of an odd position; barred from traveling in and out of nearby airports in Ukraine or Moldova, even for years before Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine, and with the Tiraspol airport supporting exactly one singular flight between 1998 and 2012, these Russians are often stationed in Transnistria for many years at a time, often rotating back and forth between the two units multiple times in order to get home. Short of a full airlift, or either Ukraine or Moldova allowing those troops to cross their territory, they aren't likely to go anywhere, and given that Ukraine would almost certainly oppose an evacuation of those troops on direct flights over Ukrainian territory, they now probably couldn't get back to Russia if they wanted to. Instead, they remain as a constant threat, not just pressuring Moldova, but doing their part in a much broader Russian effort to make Moldova, Ukraine, and the entire region unpalatable for NATO.

Russia's current influence in Transnistria goes far beyond just the deployment of its troops, into a realm referred to as "soft power"—that is, the use of economic or cultural means by one nation to influence another, rather than invading or strongarming them into compliance. One major example here, and a somewhat unavoidable one, would be Russia's substantial monetary and resource contributions to Transnistria, and giving a lifeline that, even if Transnistria is happy to accept, still has the ability to create and deepen a material dependency that simply can't be forgotten. And the Sheriff corporation, too, is a major avenue for Russia to exert soft power and influence over Transnistria. Viktor Gusan himself is a strong advocate for the set of beliefs known as Ruskiy Mir, which hold that independent nations like Moldova, Georgia, and Ukraine are part of a "Russian world", where common roots with a sort of fatherly, benevolent version of Russia take precedence over ideas like independence and sovereignty.

These ideas are echoed up and down the Transnistrian legislature, the country's military, and even the cities and towns where ordinary Transnistrians try to eke out a living. By Transnistrian regulations, the Russian flag must be flown beside the Transnistrian one in official settings. Publicly, the Transnistrian government espouses a view that sees Russia as the sole guarantor of its continued existence, standing firm against a coalition of Westernizers that includes Moldova, Romania, Europe, and the United States. Fitting with that, Ukraine's efforts to maintain its sovereignty and join NATO represents an effort to encircle Transnistria, cut it off from Russia, and force it to accept a more Westernized way of life. Threats to remove Russia's peacekeeping force, are thus threats to Transnistrian autonomy, just as attempts by Moldovans to work toward reintegration are an insidious form of long-term sabotage. Transnistrians, according to Transnistrians themselves, aren't simply a Moldovan separatist faction at all; they are an inextricably Russian place, that just happens to be somewhat distant from Russia proper.

With that view so firmly entrenched, economic outreach from Moldova has been largely unsuccessful. Repeating the cycle of past generations, the promise of higher wages in Moldova proper has given an out for people who might not have supported Transnistria's autonomy in general, but left behind an entire world of Transnistrians who are willing to accept lower wages or fewer opportunities in order to preserve the region's culture. As in the years immediately after Moldova declared its sovereignty, this pattern only serves to further isolate Transnistria, where political and business leaders are now even less likely to face push-back for their policies inside their own borders. And Transnistrians' willingness to accept some inconveniences, in the name of their autonomy, doesn't stop there. Consider their willingness to continually trade in Transnistrian currency, entirely eliminating the ability to use digital payments or credit cards or conduct any kind of international business. The same goes for the Transnistrian passport, which, to most people around the world, wouldn't be worth the paper it's printed on…but which, in Transnistria, is a valuable symbol of loyalty to a state that almost nobody else recognizes.

As a direct result of this loyalty, Transnistria, as well as the Sheriff corporation, have come along willingly on Russia's efforts to first infringe upon, and then invade, their mutual neighbor nation of Ukraine. One of Sheriff's subsidiaries, a telecommunications company called Interdnestrcom, was among the very first to offer service to the isthmus of Crimea after Russia seized and annexed it in 2014, and other Sheriff subsidiaries send textiles, construction equipment, and even luxury food items from Crimea, across Europe, and even as far as the United States. Transnistria also gave Russia a valuable media victory in those first few months of annexation, publicly declaring their own wish to be annexed by Russia, and generally trying to make the whole thing seem like a happy moment for Crimea rather than a violation of the international order.

And once the Russian invasion of Ukraine began in earnest, in March of 2022, Transnistria quickly became wrapped up in the violence. Starting in April of that year, no fewer than eight attacks occurred in Transnistria, including a drone attack, instances of Molotov cocktails being thrown at government buildings, and the laying of anti-tank mines that were used to destroy radio antennas. As for who committed those attacks, most of the international community suspects that they were a false-flag attack by Russia, hoping to draw Transnistria closer to Russian hegemony, stir up violent sentiment toward Ukraine, and, if Russia had rolled through Ukraine as it had planned, perhaps to use Transnistria as a staging area for an offensive that could have squashed Moldova as well. Russia, of course, claims that the attack was Ukrainian in origin, but the fact that it targeted relatively inconsequential, symbolic targets, would suggest that it did not come from Ukraine. Put simply, Ukraine is a lot better at sabotage than that.

But if the attack was a false-flag, it turns out that it may have had a somewhat opposite effect from what Russia intended. In the aftermath, Transnistria's president didn't call for violence against Ukraine or Moldova, or even accuse them directly of having perpetrated the attack. Instead, even in interviews with Russian state media, the president declined to name the group behind the attack, and instead stressed that the attack failed to raise tensions between Transnistria and anybody else. It was a good series of statements for someone in his position, statements that a Russian media organization could have contextualized into a verbal blow against Ukraine…but one where the real subtext seems to be, "we here in Transnistria would rather not be played."

Aside from being caught in the crosshairs of one of the more unapologetically expansionist regimes out there, the war in Ukraine has given Transnistria another problem: cutoffs from Russian oil, which, until 2022, Transnistria converted into electricity and sold to Moldova. These electricity sales were no small thing, for the people on either side of the Dniester; up to seventy percent of Moldovan electricity comes from Transnistria, while Transnistria reaps the financial rewards of its sales. But since then, Russia has slashed gas supply to Transnistria, forcing Transnistria to stop selling to Moldova proper. But this, like so many elements of Russian conduct around its invasion of Ukraine, has ended up backfiring; Transnistria's oil shortage forced a closer collaboration between Tiraspol and Chisinau, where Moldova now buys gas from the European Union, sends the EU and Russian gas they've got to Transnistria, and receives it back in the form of electricity.

At the same time, Moldova has taken steps to criminalize acts of separatism in Transnistria—not to retroactively punish people already living in the breakaway region, but to get ahead of future separatist acts that might drive Moldova and Transnistria further apart. As for who that effects…well, in theory, the ordinary people of Transnistria should be largely immune, while the region's leaders, official and unofficial, are direct targets. The exact effects of this new law are still unknown, but at least in theory, it may be used as a tool to separate the Transnistrian population from their ruling elites. This, in advance of new Moldovan movement toward European Union membership, something that would need to be explained to a Transnistrian public who've spent decades under the assumption that the EU and NATO are a destructive force.

Finally, there's the implications of the war for those Russian troops still stationed in Transnistria. Although they haven't left, and in fact, they're hemmed in by tanks and soldiers on the Ukrainian side of the border, they're subject to the same changing judgment of the Russian military that, well, the entire Russian military is. With Russia's global capacity to intimidate and menace the rest of the world, now looking somewhat diminished, it's an open question as to whether a relatively small force of 1,500 troops will be as much a deterrent for Moldovan pro-Europe action, as they've previously been. Not only that, but if Transnistria ever does seem to grow closer to rejoining Moldova, those 1,500 troops wouldn't just have to contend with Moldovan opposition, but now, Ukrainian troops as well.

Ask Russia what they think about all this, and the answer will most likely be some form of, "desperate times call for desperate measures". Early in 2023, documents from Russia's internal security service, the FSB, came to light, in which the FSB laid out a detailed, ten-year plan to destabilize Moldova and prevent it from growing closer to Europe. The document, which seemed to be written in 2021, was focused on increasing Moldovan dependency to Russian gas and blocking Moldova's attempts to grow their influence in Transnistria…but these were goals laid out before the war in Ukraine, before Russia unintentionally forced Moldova and Transnistria to work together to keep the lights on, and before the Russian bear opened its mouth, and was revealed to lack fangs.

The Russian response to the report was predictable; in the words of Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, "We are very sorry that the current leadership of Moldova is experiencing completely unjustified and unfounded prejudices against Moscow". That quote, of course, given a little over a year into an ongoing invasion of Moldova's neighbor. After the report was revealed to the public, the EU and the United States began taking more overt steps in support of Moldova, including more energy assistance, and members of Moldova's opposition Shor Party, a group widely seen as a Russian proxy, have recently been arrested on suspicion that they intended to cause violence and unrest during peaceful protests.

And the reasons why all these changes in the rest of Moldova are so important, are because the country may be working toward a Transnistrian end-game, one in which the region has little choice but to come back into the fold. If, and when, Moldova breaks its dependency on Russian energy completely, it will then have a second choice: whether or not to also end its dependency on Transnistrian electricity. If it does, meaning that Moldova would not send its gas to Transnistria for conversion to electricity, then Transnistria will be out in the cold. Its routes to smuggle supplies through Ukraine no longer exist, its economic dependence on Moscow is no longer tenable, and it would, almost certainly, begin the long march toward bankruptcy. If that happens, then Transnistria may have no choice but to deliver itself to Moldova on a silver platter.

The alternative, is that Moldova may choose to continue converting gas to electricity in Transnistria—but this time, by supplying gas sourced from the EU, the United States, and other friendly partners around the world. Do this, and Transnistria gets to stay afloat, but only because of what would essentially be an unbreakable symbiosis with the rest of Moldova. That economic dependence, Moldova hopes, might lead to a range of other benefits: a decline in power in the Sheriff corporation, an opportunity to give Moldova more leverage in Transnistrian politics, and maybe, just maybe, a real chance at reconciliation.

And with Russia gone, with its weird corporate overlords unable to make ends meet for long, this may be the best option left for Transnistria. If they try to go it alone, their future is far from bright; the region suffers from severe brain drain, a situation in which young, educated Transnistrians are enticed away to other countries on the promise of wages that their Transnistrian employers simply cannot match. Its ability to produce essential resources by itself, is negligible in many critical sectors. And put simply, it's too small, with borders too porous, and with a government too weak to self-isolate in the way that, say, North Korea has. In fact, while the number of inhabitants we gave at the start, 450,000, is generally seen as being somewhat reliable, some estimates place the real number of Transnistrians as low as 250,000, just half of what it was in the final days of the Soviet Union. Transnistria, as we speak, is falling apart, and Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Moldova's energy independence, and the departure of Transnistria's youth, might be enough to push the region toward reintegration with Moldova, for good.

So that's Transnistria, a well-kept secret nestled into Eastern Europe, a place where the world seems almost turned on its head…and that's Transnistria, a small, struggling breakaway region that may well be on its last legs. What the future holds for the Transnistrian people, what it holds for the long legacy of pro-Russian loyalty among the population, and what reintegration with Moldova, and then the West, would mean, it's hard to say…but no matter how all this plays out, it seems abundantly clear that the status quo in Transnistria cannot remain stable for long.

<!-- aeo:section end="an-outsize-geopolitical-player" -->
<!-- aeo:section start="key-takeaways" -->
## Key Takeaways

- Transnistria is a breakaway region in Moldova, unrecognized internationally, with a unique blend of Soviet nostalgia and corporate control.
- The Sheriff corporation dominates Transnistria's economy, controlling major industries and exerting significant political influence.
- Transnistria faces severe human rights issues, including forced disappearances, torture, and restrictions on free expression and press.
- The region is a hub for smuggling, particularly arms and human trafficking, with porous borders and corrupt officials facilitating illegal activities.
- Transnistria's future is uncertain, with potential reintegration into Moldova driven by economic dependencies and geopolitical shifts.

<!-- aeo:section end="key-takeaways" -->
<!-- aeo:section start="frequently-asked-questions" -->
## Frequently Asked Questions

### What is Transnistria?

Transnistria is a breakaway region in Eastern Europe, located within the borders of Moldova. It claims to be an independent country but is not recognized by any United Nations member state. It is known for its unique political and economic situation, including its strong ties to Russia and the influence of the Sheriff corporation.

### What is the population and size of Transnistria?

Transnistria has a population of approximately 465,000 people and covers an area of just over 4,000 square kilometers. It is a narrow strip of land along the eastern border of Moldova, separated by the Dniester River.

### What is the economic situation in Transnistria?

Transnistria's economy is primarily based on the production of steel, textiles, and electricity. The region's GDP is around $1.2 billion USD, which is divided among nearly half a million people. The Sheriff corporation controls a significant portion of the economy, with monopolies in several sectors.

### What is the political structure of Transnistria?

Transnistria is administered as a unitary republic under President Vadim Krasnoselsky and a Supreme Council of 33 members. The region is heavily influenced by Russian interests, and its political leaders often have close ties to Russia.

### What is the role of the Sheriff corporation in Transnistria?

The Sheriff corporation is a major economic and political force in Transnistria, controlling about 60% of the region's economy. It has monopolies in trade, oil, and media, and its influence extends to various sectors, including football, gas stations, supermarkets, and telecommunications.

### What are the human rights issues in Transnistria?

Transnistria has been reported to have significant human rights abuses, including forced disappearances, torture, dangerous prison conditions, arbitrary detention, judicial corruption, severe restrictions on free expression and the press, and repression against journalists. There are also restrictions on free movement and lack of protection for women and LGBT persons.

### What is the historical background of Transnistria?

Transnistria has a distinct history from the rest of Moldova, with the Dniester River serving as a natural divide. The region was part of the Moldovan Soviet Socialist Republic but maintained a diverse ethnic makeup. In the late 1980s, as Moldova sought independence from the Soviet Union, Transnistria organized separatist movements due to fears of Romanianization.

### What is the role of Russia in Transnistria?

Russia has significant influence in Transnistria, providing economic and military support. There are approximately 1,500 Russian troops stationed in the region, and Russia's soft power extends through economic aid and cultural influence. Transnistria is often seen as a pro-Russian region, with strong ties to Russian interests.

### What is the current geopolitical significance of Transnistria?

Transnistria has gained importance in the Eastern European geopolitical sphere due to Russia's desire to expand its influence. The region is seen as a strategic asset for Russia, providing a base for military operations and a buffer against Western influence. The ongoing conflict in Ukraine has further highlighted Transnistria's geopolitical significance.

### What are the future prospects for Transnistria?

The future of Transnistria is uncertain, with potential scenarios including reintegration with Moldova, continued dependence on Russia, or further isolation. The region faces economic challenges, brain drain, and political instability, which may push it toward reintegration with Moldova or further dependence on external support.

<!-- aeo:section end="frequently-asked-questions" -->
<!-- aeo:section start="sources" -->
## Sources

- [Original Places video: Transnistria: The Strangest Place on Earth](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ygSYfJP14o)
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- [https://apnews.com/article/soccer-sports-la-liga-major-league-soccer-moldova-37bbc881812396e4a6f1a1fa690ab316](https://apnews.com/article/soccer-sports-la-liga-major-league-soccer-moldova-37bbc881812396e4a6f1a1fa690ab316)
- [https://www.dw.com/en/sheriff-tiraspol-the-champions-league-club-without-a-country-but-now-in-dreamland/a-59177975](https://www.dw.com/en/sheriff-tiraspol-the-champions-league-club-without-a-country-but-now-in-dreamland/a-59177975)
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- [https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/transnistria-communism-never-died/](https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/transnistria-communism-never-died/)
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- [https://www.wired.com/2016/03/meet-people-transnistria-stuck-time-soviet-country-doesnt-exist/](https://www.wired.com/2016/03/meet-people-transnistria-stuck-time-soviet-country-doesnt-exist/)
- [https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20200205-celebrating-a-nation-that-doesnt-exist](https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20200205-celebrating-a-nation-that-doesnt-exist)
- [https://www.cnn.com/2015/10/07/politics/fbi-helped-thwart-nuclear-smuggling-plot-in-moldova/index.html](https://www.cnn.com/2015/10/07/politics/fbi-helped-thwart-nuclear-smuggling-plot-in-moldova/index.html)
- [https://dra.american.edu/islandora/object/0809capstones:204/datastream/PDF/view](https://dra.american.edu/islandora/object/0809capstones:204/datastream/PDF/view)
- [https://www.state.gov/reports/2022-trafficking-in-persons-report/moldova/](https://www.state.gov/reports/2022-trafficking-in-persons-report/moldova/)
- [https://globalsecurityreview.com/transnistria-no-longer-illegal-trade-hub/](https://globalsecurityreview.com/transnistria-no-longer-illegal-trade-hub/)
- [https://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/28/world/europe/28ukraine.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/28/world/europe/28ukraine.html)
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- [https://origins.osu.edu/read/transnistria-history-behind-russian-backed-region?language_content_entity=en](https://origins.osu.edu/read/transnistria-history-behind-russian-backed-region?language_content_entity=en)
- [https://carnegieendowment.org/politika/89731](https://carnegieendowment.org/politika/89731)
- [https://balkaninsight.com/2023/04/21/russian-troop-movements-in-transnistria-alarm-moldova/](https://balkaninsight.com/2023/04/21/russian-troop-movements-in-transnistria-alarm-moldova/)
- [https://www.dw.com/en/will-the-war-in-ukraine-spell-the-end-of-transnistria/a-64363639#:~:text=The%20resulting%20pro%2DRussia%20breakaway,Moldova's%20eastern%20border%20with%20Ukraine](https://www.dw.com/en/will-the-war-in-ukraine-spell-the-end-of-transnistria/a-64363639#:~:text=The%20resulting%20pro%2DRussia%20breakaway,Moldova's%20eastern%20border%20with%20Ukraine)
- [https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/16/europe/russia-moldova-secret-document-intl-cmd/index.html](https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/16/europe/russia-moldova-secret-document-intl-cmd/index.html)
- [https://www.reuters.com/world/us-help-moldova-fight-russias-destabilization-efforts-2023-03-10/](https://www.reuters.com/world/us-help-moldova-fight-russias-destabilization-efforts-2023-03-10/)
- [https://www.rferl.org/a/31725278.html](https://www.rferl.org/a/31725278.html)
- [https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/u-s-sanctions-russia-backed-actors-accused-of-trying-to-destabilize-moldova](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/u-s-sanctions-russia-backed-actors-accused-of-trying-to-destabilize-moldova)
- [https://www.dw.com/en/moldova-pm-greatest-threats-relate-to-energy-security/a-63950354](https://www.dw.com/en/moldova-pm-greatest-threats-relate-to-energy-security/a-63950354)
- [Hero image source](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/83/Popencu%2C_Transnistria%2C_Moldavia%2C_2023-11-01%2C_DD_15.jpg) by Diego Delso / openverse, by-sa.

<!-- aeo:section end="sources" -->
<!-- aeo:section start="related-coverage" -->
## Related Coverage
<!-- aeo:section end="related-coverage" -->