In the last three days of the war in Ukraine, some attention was focused on a strip of territory about 400 kilometers long and about twenty kilometers wide, formally belonging to Moldova and bordering Ukraine: it is Transnistria, where on Tuesday It There were some attacks on public buildings and radio antennas, possibly carried out by Russian or pro-Russian forces to create a possible pretext justifying an invasion of Moldova or an invasion of Ukraine from the west (there is still no certainty anyway about the attacks). , and the messages are quite confused).
Transnistria, whose name means “beyond the river Dniester,” is a pro-Russian republic that claims to be independent but has never recognized any country in the world, not even Russia, with which local leaders have maintained close ties for years.
Separatist entities in Transnistria began to develop in the early 1990s and then with greater intensity in 1992 after the collapse of the Soviet Union and Moldova’s declaration of independence. There had been low-intensity armed conflicts before, but in the early months of 1992 fierce fighting broke out between separatist and Moldovan forces, also involving the Russian army in support of the separatists and Romanian volunteers in support of the separatist Moldovans.
The fighting claimed about a thousand lives before a ceasefire was reached in July 1992. In the years that followed, attempts were made to find a political solution to the crisis, but without success: in 2005, a dialogue began with Russia, Moldova, Ukraine and the US OSCE countries to reach an agreement on the creation of a federal Republic of Moldova, which would also include Transnistria. But the negotiations broke down and in 2014, with the annexation of Crimea by Russia, the hypothesis finally disappeared.
Tiraspol (Valentina Lovato / The Post)
Throughout these years, a strong bond has remained between Transnistria and Russia. Even today, Russia sends vital economic and military aid to Transnistria for the local economy: it has stationed an army contingent of about 1,500 units in Transnistria, pays the elderly in Transnistria an additional pension and supplies them with gas at controlled prices.
A large part of the population speaks Russian, the Cyrillic alphabet is used in the region and television broadcasts are dominated by the pro-government Russian media, which broadcast distorted versions of the war in Ukraine that many in Transnistria believe in. Moldova actually has no points of contact with this breakaway region, which has its own government and its own currency (the Transnistrian ruble). The country’s largest corporate group – Sheriff – is run by some sort of pro-Russian oligarch and controls a chain of stores, gas stations and the country’s strongest soccer team, Sheriff Tiraspol.
This group was founded in the 1990s by two former members of the KGB, the Soviet secret service, and indeed Transnistria still maintains a connection with the Soviet Union that is unthinkable anywhere else in the world. The official flag shows the hammer and sickle, a symbol also repeated on public buildings and signs. Tiraspol, the capital, is filled with statues dedicated to Soviet generals, including a huge one of Lenin in front of the government building.