Moldova: A divided country

I had first visited Moldova in July 2022, travelling down from Iaşi (pronounced Yash), in Romania, and spending a couple of days in Chişinău before heading to Odessa. That was my first visit to Ukraine since Russia’s full-scale invasion of the country that February. In the absence of direct flights to Ukraine due to the war, Moldova has become one of the main entry points into the country. Dozens of buses travel from Chişinău to Odessa every day, most people coming straight out of the airport and on to a bus. Refugees visiting their homes, women and children reuniting with their husbands and fathers who are not allowed to leave Ukraine.

I had not fully appreciated Chişinău on that first visit (see post of 23 July 2023). My perspective had been distorted by my arrival at the central bus station, situated in the heart of the city’s sprawling central market, a somewhat rundown neighbourhood, bustling during the daytime, but almost empty and rather forbidding in the evenings, when the market has packed up for the night. To get to my hotel, I had to pass along a derelict street of abandoned, broken buildings. I was in Moldova again for a couple of weeks in the autumn of 2024. On this occasion, I had the opportunity to visit other parts of the country, as well as Chişinău. I learned to appreciate Chişinău this time, its well-tended, shady parks, its cafes under the trees, its fine restaurants.

I was back again in the summer of 2025, passing through on my way down to Odessa, and spending a few days on my return. This time I spent a couple of days in breakaway Transnistria, the Administrative-Territorial Units of the Left Bank of the Dniester, as it is officially known in Moldova, or the Pridnestrovian (“by the Dniester”) Moldavian Republic, or just Pridnestrovie, as it is called by the unrecognised separatist state strung out along the Dniester river in eastern Moldova. In light of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, I had some qualms about visiting a territory under Russian control. On my visit to Moldova the previous autumn, I had been to the security zone along the ceasefire line separating Transnistria from government-controlled Moldova. On that occasion, I was on the side of the zone under Moldovan control, but getting there meant passing through a checkpoint manned by Russian soldiers, part of the trilateral peacekeeping force comprising soldiers from Moldova, Transnistria and Russia.

The House of Soviets, with Lenin bust, Tiraspol

The left, east bank of the Dniester split away from the rest of Moldova as the Soviet Union broke up at the beginning of the 1990s and Moldova moved towards independence. In a brief war that surged in 1992, with help from former Soviet, now Russian forces, the Transnistrian separatists prevailed, leading to a frozen conflict and the deployment of Russian “peacekeepers” who are still there today. The breakaway region has a complex ethnic makeup, with a plurality of Russians, as well as Ukrainians and Moldovans, and smaller numbers of other ethnic groups.

The territory of today’s Republic of Moldova had been part of the medieval Principality of Moldavia, with its capital in Iaşi, which by the 16^th century had become a vassal of the Ottoman Empire. However, in 1812, the eastern half of Moldavia, today’s Republic of Moldova plus territories to the north and south in present-day Ukraine, was annexed by the Russian Empire. The western half of historic Moldavia went on to unite with Wallachia to form the Romanian state in the mid-19^th century. When the Russian and Austro-Hungarian empires collapsed at the end of the First World War, Romania expanded into ethnically and linguistically Romanian lands. Eastern Moldova, also known as Bessarabia, was incorporated into Romania. But the east bank of the Dniester became part of Soviet Ukraine.

In 1924, the Soviets created the Moldavian Autonomous Socialist Republic along the east bank of the Dniester, within Soviet Ukraine. The capital was initially in Balta, which is today a district of Odessa Region, but in 1929 it was moved to Tiraspol. The idea for the Soviets was that this autonomous region would be a magnet for the rest of Moldova, which they hoped to recover. When, during the Second World War, Moldova was annexed by the Soviet Union, the east bank of the Dniester, including Tiraspol, became part of the Moldavian Soviet Republic.

As the fighting in Transnistria reached its culmination in the summer of 1992, separatist forces, aided by the Russian army, seized the town of Bender, also known as Tighina, on the west bank of the Dniester. There are also pockets of territory on the east bank that remain under Moldovan control. Since 1992, the conflict has remained essentially frozen, although in 1997 an agreement was signed by the two sides, normalising relations between the two territories.

I have visited several unrecognised separatist territories, including Abkhazia in Georgia, Nagorno-Karabakh, when it was still under Armenian control, the Luhansk People’s Republic in eastern Ukraine, and Northern Cyprus. None of them have established a normal modus vivendi to the extent that Moldova has done with Transnistria. People travel back and forth freely. Marshrutkas (minibuses) leave Chişinău for Tiraspol every 20 minutes. Vehicles with Transnistria license plates (which bear the Transnistria flag) can be seen in Moldovan-controlled territory, just as Moldovan-registered vehicles can be seen in Transnistria. Entering Transnistria when I visited, the formalities at the crossing point were quick and easy. On the government-controlled side, no checks at all. On the Transnistria side, a quick check of my passport, my details entered in their system, and I was asked the purpose of my visit. I was then given a slip of paper, which I had to produce, along with my passport, on my return.

Transnistria is famed for existing in a Soviet time warp, with its Soviet era monuments, statues of Lenin and other Soviet heroes. Tourists visit Tiraspol for a glimpse of the old Soviet Union. The Transnistria flag even retains the Soviet hammer and sickle emblem. I had supper at a restaurant called Snova v SSSR (Back to the USSR), a kind of Disney land of Soviet nostalgia. But if a desire to hang on to the certainties of the Soviet world, above all its Russian primacy, was behind Transnistria’s separatism, beyond the outward symbols, I don’t think Transnistria today is very Soviet. Much of the economy has been privatised since the 1990s. Tiraspol has excellent cafes serving cappuccinos and delicious pastries, as well as numerous restaurants serving pizzas, burgers and all the fare of the modern world. Its shops are well stocked with all manner of produce.

Wall of Memory, Tiraspol

As well as the Soviet-era monuments, there are also memorials associated with the war at the beginning of the 1990s, commemorating the soldiers who fell for Transnistria. The Memorial of Glory in Tiraspol honours the dead of the Second World War, the Afghan War, and the Transnistrian War. At its centre is the tomb of the unknown soldier and eternal flame. There is also a World II tank. More recently, the memorial was reconstructed, with a Wall of Memory listing those who died for Transnistria.

In Bender, close to the western end of the bridge across the Dniester, linking the town with Tiraspol, there is a collection of monuments. The Stele “City of Military Glory” was unveiled in 2015 to mark the 70^th anniversary of the end of World War II. The president of Transnistria had designated Bender a “City of Military Glory” in 2012. Nearby is the Memorial of Commemoration and Sorrow, dedicated to those who died in the Transnistria war. The monument is described as an open chapel and is topped by a cross. Next to it is a restored infantry fighting vehicle whose crew had died in the fighting in 1992, and also an eternal flame. There is also a monument to Alexander Lebed, the Russian general whose intervention on the side of the Transnistrian separatists was critical in inflicting defeat on the Moldovan forces. Lebed was quite the hero for Transnistria. There is also a rather less well cared for monument to him in a scrappy untended park near the railway station in Tiraspol. Lebed’s involvement in the Transnistria war made him highly popular in Russia, and some considered him a potential successor to President Boris Yeltsin. He was a pragmatic general, who, despite his support for Transnistria, apparently regarded its leaders with contempt as a gang of corrupt “hooligans.” He went on to play a key role in negotiating an end to the first Chechen war.

Memorial of Commemoration and Sorrow, Bender

Yet another nearby monument in Bender is the Monument of Russian Glory, an obelisk topped by an eagle, which was inaugurated in 1912 to mark the centenary of Imperial Russia’s victory over the Ottoman Empire, and the annexation of Bessarabia to the Russian Empire. It had originally stood inside Bender castle, on a hill overlooking the Dniester, which has recently been much restored. All these monuments to military victories, those of the more distant past as well as the more recent victory over Moldova, seem to suggest a state fixated on war. This mirrors the obsession with war promoted by the Putin regime in Russia. In Tiraspol there were posters commemorating the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany, although it was the end of July, and the anniversary had been nearly three months earlier. Looking at the memorials to those who died to separate Transnistria from Moldova highlights the difficulties that would have to be overcome if Transnistria is to be reintegrated with Moldova.

Transnistria has faced a severe economic crisis in 2025, since Russia’s gas supplies were cut off due to Ukraine’s ending of a transit agreement at the end of 2024. Transnistria had depended on Russia’s supply of essentially free gas, which powered its industries as well as providing heating and electricity for its inhabitants. That dependency also ensured that Transnistria remained tethered by a tight leash to Moscow. The result of the cut-off was factories halting operations and power cuts for Transnistria’s residents. The crisis is potentially existential for Transnistria, where the economy and the government’s finances had depended on the subsidised Russian gas. An offer of EU help was rejected, presumably under Russian pressure. A partial solution was found by which gas is supplied by a Hungarian company through Moldova, funded by a Russian loan. But the crisis has highlighted just how vulnerable Transnistria is given its dependence on a faraway patron. Moldova itself, with EU help, had already been diversifying its energy supply away from Russia since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and is hooked up to Romania’s electricity grid.

Transnistria finds itself ever more dependent on Moldova. Transnistrian enterprises have to be registered in Moldova in order to trade with Europe. Since 2022, the breakaway territory’s border with Ukraine has been closed. People and goods can get into or out of Transnistria only through Moldova. As it is recognised as part of Moldova, Transnistria has benefited from the Association Agreement Moldova signed with the EU in 2014, boosting trade with the EU, as well as ensuring that Transnistria’s exports have to comply with EU and Moldovan standards. This economic dependence gives Moldova leverage. Moldova’s approach towards Transnistria, with its openness to free movement of people and goods is probably wise, and stands in marked contrast to Ukraine’s approach to the separatist territories in Donbas from 2014 until the full-scale invasion in 2022. The prospect of an eventual peaceful reintegration of Transnistria into Moldova would surely be worth such patience.

In the centre of Tiraspol, tall flag poles fly the flags of Transnistria alongside those of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, two separatist territories in Georgia that are sustained by Russian support. There are also representative offices of the two breakaway states, both in the same building. When I walked past, a man was busy putting up a poster commemorating the war in 2008, when Russia invaded Georgia in support of its South Ossetian clients. Evidently there is a strong common sense of shared destiny among these separatist lands. But Transnistria’s position, cut off and lacking a common border with Russia, is more fragile those of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

Out of Transnistria’s population of 475,000, according to the 2015 census, some 300,000 are reckoned to have Moldovan citizenship. Many Transnistrians have multiple passports, with around 150,000 having Russian citizenship, and 100,000 having Ukrainian citizenship, as well as smaller numbers with Belarusian, Bulgarian or Israeli citizenship, and many with Romanian citizenship. Walking in the centre of Tiraspol, I saw an advertisement for legal services for people seeking Moldovan, Russian, Ukrainian or Romanian passports. The demand for alternative passports would seem to indicate a high degree of pragmatism among Transnistria’s residents.

While there is little sign at this point of a willingness on the part of Transnistria to reintegrate with Moldova, nevertheless a pragmatic willingness to rub along appears to underlie relations between Tiraspol and Chişinău. This is partly due to force of circumstances. Without Moldovan goodwill, Transnistria would be totally isolated. This pragmatism could be seen in the Moldovan referendum in October 2024, on placing the aspiration to join the EU in the country’s constitution. The referendum passed by a wafer-thin margin, indicating the extent to which Moldovans are divided over the questions of their relationships with Europe and with Russia. It passed at all only thanks to the votes of Moldovans living abroad, who voted overwhelmingly in favour of integration with the EU (more than 200 polling stations were opened abroad, only two of which were in Russia, much to Moscow’s annoyance). Moldovan citizens resident in Transnistria had the opportunity to vote in special polling stations in government-controlled territory, many of them inside the security zone. Official data show that over 15,000 of them did so, of whom 31 per cent voted yes to EU integration. Visiting some of the polling stations, I saw that, while the majority spoke with polling election officials in Russian, many spoke Romanian. Evidently, at least part of Transnistria’s population identifies with Moldova and with its European future.

Russian influence and interference in Moldova is intense. While the conflict over Transnistria remains frozen, Russia has continued to pursue a hybrid campaign in Moldova, seeking to influence its elections, supporting pro-Russian candidates in the hope of bringing to power a government more conducive to Russian interests. This was very much evident in the referendum and presidential election, the first round of which was held on the same day. The process was marred by massive vote-buying, involving money transfers from Russia, a key role being played by the pro-Russian Israeli-born Moldovan politician Ilan Shor, who currently resides in Russia, a fugitive from justice in Moldova following his conviction over a massive banking fraud.

Pro-Russian sentiment remains widespread in Moldova. A couple of weeks after the referendum, I was in the southern region of Gagauzia, an autonomous territory in southern Moldova. The Gagauz are a Turkic-speaking Orthodox Christian people, found in southern Bessarabia, in neighbouring Ukraine, as well as in Moldova. Most Gagauz had opposed Moldovan independence. Worried by the example set by violent separatism in Transnistria, in the 1990s Chişinău granted the Gagauz territorial autonomy within Moldova. Soviet nostalgia and pro-Russian sentiment remain potent within the region. In Gagauzia’s regional capital, I visited the local winery. It houses a museum of Soviet nostalgia, including artefacts from Soviet times, Soviet military and Komsomol (Communist youth league) hats that you can try on, a Lenin bust, and all the old flags of the Soviet republics, including the hammer and sickle. In referendums in Gagauzia in 2014, more than 98 per cent voted in favour of joining the Customs Union of Russia, Belaris and Kazakhstan. Over 97 per cent opposed integration with the EU, and nearly 99 per cent supported independence in case Moldova were to unite with Romania. In the October 2024 referendum, nearly 95 per cent in Gagauzia voted against EU integration.

Although the Gagauz have their own language, the lingua franca in Gagauzia is Russian, and during my stay in the regional capital, Comrat, and in my travels around the region, I mostly heard Russian spoken. Many Gagauz speak Romanian poorly, and there is a lot of sensitivity about the Romanian language being imposed. Within Gagauzia, people have the right to use Gagauz or Russian, as well as Romanian, in public life. I was told that many people do speak Gagauz in rural areas, but oddly, it seems that the language issue in Gagauzia is mainly about defending the use of Russian, rather than of Gagauz.

While the referendum in favour of EU integration marginally passed, thanks to the votes of the Moldovan diaspora, the majority of regions in the country voted against. As well as Gagauzia in the south, neighbouring Taraclia disrict, with its ethnic-Bulgarian majority, voted “no” by 92 per cent, and much of the north also voted strongly against. The presidential election held at the same pitted the pro-western incumbent, Maia Sandu, against Aleksandr Stoianoglo, an ethnic-Gagauz who was seen as the pro-Russian candidate. While Stoianoglo said he supported Moldova’s European path, he opposed the referendum question on enshrining EU integration in the constitution, and promised a foreign policy that balanced East and West. Sandu emerged victorious with 55 per cent of the vote. Mirroring the referendum result, support for Stoianoglo was stronger in the south and north.

While Sandu supporters put the closeness of the referendum and election results down to Russian interference and vote-buying, nevertheless the results would suggest Moldovan society remains divided over its relations with Russia and Europe. Rather than scorning those citizens who are unconvinced by the EU integration path, Ukraine’s example might serve as a salutary warning to proceed with caution, avoiding polarisation and seeking a broader consensus about the country’s European future. Moldova’s path towards Europe is surely clear. But with an aggressive Russian regime still using all means to put obstacles in its way, and a population much of which remains to be convinced, caution would surely be prudent.

Travels in Moldova and Bucovina

It was a long, slow train journey from Bucharest to Bucovina, in the north-east of Romania, close to the border with Ukraine. I arrived late in the evening at the little railway station at Gura Humorului, to the west of the county capital, Suceava. My main purpose in coming to Gura Humorului was to visit a couple of the famous medieval painted monasteries nearby. Bucovina had been part of the principality of Moldavia since the 14^th century, but in 1775 it was annexed to the Hapsburg Empire. The name Bucovina, or Buchenland in German, meant beech land, a reference to its rolling forested hills. In 1918, Bucovina was incorporated into the newly united Romanian state. However, in the second world war, the Soviet Union annexed the northern half of the region to the Ukrainian Soviet Republic. Northern Bucovina, officially known as Chernivtsi Region in Ukraine, remains part of Ukraine.

I set off in the morning under a hot sun to walk to the monastery of Voroneț (pronounced Voronets), about 3 or 4 kilometres south of the town. Founded in1488, its church is one of eight in the area that are now UN World Heritage sites. The idea of covering the exterior walls as well as the interior with frecoes is credited to the mid-16th century Orthodox Metropolitan of Moldavia, Grigore Roşca, to illustrate biblical stories for the benefit of the illiterate peasantry. Sitting amid wooded hills and protected by a walled stockade, it is a beautiful, peaceful place. The colours of the frescoes are in remarkably good condition given the passage of time, and the faces and features of the saints are still clear. From Voroneț, I headed back to Gura Humorului, and decided that, rather than walk, I would take the local bus to the Humor Monastery, about five kilometres away.

Voroneț Monastery, Bucovina

Built in 1530, the Humor Monastery church is architecturally similar to that at Voroneț, but it lacks a spire. There is, however, a tower a few metres away from the church. The frescoes at Humor have suffered more from weathering than those at Voroneț, especially on the side that is more exposed to direct sunlight. In the frecoes at the Humor monastery, the colouring is different from that at Voroneț. At Voroneț, a particulalrly vivid blue stands out, known as Voroneț blue. But the biblical stories they depict are much the same. I was particularly drawn to the depiction of the Last Judgement that covers the back walls of both monastery churches. As the figure of Christ presides, with the saints seated to either side, the dead rise from their graves, summoned by Angels blowing horns, while wild animals offer up the bones of those they have devoured, and a ship rises from the depths of the sea. While the righteous press to enter the garden of heaven, the damned are pushed by demons, themselves prodded by Angels with their lances, into a flaming river that takes them down to Hell. It is a very vivid scene, no doubt intended to be instructive and frightening to sinful believers.

The next morning I set off by minibus to the city of Iaşi (pronounced Yash), close to the border with the Republic of Moldova. Iaşi had been the capital of the principality of Moldavia from 1564 until 1859, and then of the United principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia until 1862, when Bucharest became the capital of the new, united Romanian state. Historic Moldavia had been much larger before the eastern half of the principality, Bessarabia, was ceded to Imperial Russia in 1812 by the Ottoman Empire, of which Moldavia was a vassal state. After the First World War, the Romanian state expanded to include Bessarabia, as well as Bucovina. But during the World War II, the Soviet Union took back Bessarabia, the majority of which today forms the independent Republic of Moldova, while southern Bessarabia was incorporated into Ukraine.

Church of the Three Hierarchs, Iaşi

Iaşi is known as an important cultural centre in Romania, and is home to the oldest Romanian university and theatre. It is an attractive town, with numerous fine churches and monasteries, as well as civic buildings and gardens which I found were generally better maintained than is the case in Bucharest. The historic theatre is especially beautiful, as is the remarkable Church of the Three Hierarchs. The church was built by one of Moldavia’s most famous rulers, Vasile Lupu (Basil the Wolf), who was of Albanian origin and ruled the principality for nearly 20 years in the 17^th century. The outside of the building is decorated from top to bottom with strikingly original intricate stone lacery. Vasile Lupu also introduced Moldavia’s first printing press and its first codified law. He was a noted champion of Orthodox Christianity, hosting the Synod of Iaşi, which was convened by the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople in 1642 to counter what were seen as Roman Catholic and Protestant doctrinal errors. The spirit of Vasile Lupu appears to live on. Apart from numerous churches, I don’t think I had ever before visited a town whose streets were so full of people in priestly garb. I visited the monasteries of Barboi and Golia, tranquil walled refuges in the heart of the city. There is also an Armenian church, indicating the widespread influence of the Armenian diaspora over centuries.

From Iaşi, I travelled by minibus across the border to Chişinău, capital city of the present-day independent Republic of Moldova. Chişinău was a small town when Bessarabia was annexed by the Russian Empire in 1812, but as the capital of Bessarabia province it was developed over the following decades, with broad avenues, a cathedral and a triumphal arch to mark the Russian victory in the Russo-Turkish war of 1828-29. Following Bessarabia’s unification with Romania after the First World War, in the 1920s a statue of Stephen the Great, medieval Moldavia’s most notable ruler, who reigned for nearly half a century from 1457-1504, was erected in the city centre. The statue has had an unsettled history, reflecting the shifting borders in the region. In 1940, it was moved to Vasliu, in Romania, days before the Soviet annexation of Bessarabia, then back to Chişinău in 1942, when Romania, allied with Nazi Germany, had recovered not only Bessarabia and northern Bucovina, but had expanded into Odessa region in Ukraine. In 1944, as Bessarabia was again occupied by the Soviets, it was moved back again to Romania, and then in 1945, as ordered by the Soviet authorities, it was returned to Chişinău. Finally, in 1989, it was restored to its original place in the city. 

Chişinău

When I visited, in the summer of 2022, Chişinău still had some of its Soviet-era monuments, among them an equestrian statue of Grigory Kotovsky, a notorious gangster turned Red Army commander during the civil war that followed the Bolshevik Revolution. He had a town named after him, Kotovsk, just across the border in Odessa region, in Ukraine. I had stayed there a few years previously. Kotovsky, who was murdered in 1925, was interred in a mausoleum in a Kotovsk park, and there was also a statue of him in front of the railway station, in a heroic pose with his sword pointing to the sky. In 2016, the town was renamed Podilsk, in line with a Ukrainian law forbidding place names or monuments commemorating communist figures.

Although Kotovsky was from Bessarabia, in today’s Moldova, he was of mixed Polish-Russian parentage, typical of the multi-ethnic makeup of the region. Like Odessa to the south, Chişinău had a significant Jewish population, nearly 50 per cent by the end of the 19^th century. And like Odessa, the city’s Jews experienced murderous pogroms in the first years of the 20^th century. During World War II, the Romanian regime of Ion Antonescu carried out the holocaust against the Jewish population in the territories it annexed from the Soviet Union, including Bessarabia.

In the early period of Soviet rule, Moldovans suffered the same trauma as other territories newly incorporated into the Soviet Union, in the Baltic states and western Ukraine, of mass executions and deportations. Despite that, and despite three decades of independence and the ongoing Russian occupation of a part of Moldova’s territory, Transnistria, a part of the population has maintained a pro-Russian stance, voting for pro-Russian parties. Moldova’s Soviet rulers attempted to separate a Moldovan identity from Romania, with its own language written in Cyrillic, unlike Romanian, which is written in the Latin script. Following independence, the country reverted to the Latin alphabet, and the declaration of independence referred to the country’s language as Romanian. However, the question of the country’s identity and language continued to be contentious. The 1994 constitution referred to the official language as Moldovan, while in 2013 the Constitutional Court ruled that the independence declaration took precedence, and that the country’s language was thus Romanian. My confusion during this, my first visit to Moldova, was compounded by the fact that Russian continued to be spoken by many in Chişinău. In the family-run hotel where I stayed, my hostess spoke Russian with her family members, although she informed me that she was Moldovan and could speak Moldovan.

Away from the avenues and squares, the park with its well-tended flower beds, Chişinău is a scrappy, uncared for city. The minibus I arrived on dropped me in the central market area, a mess of dirty streets, rubbish, greasy, broken pavements and evident poverty. By early evening these streets were largely deserted. Chişinău is certainly a far less impressive capital than Iaşi.

Moldova has had more than its share of troubles in recent years. Its development stunted by persistent meddling from Russia. Abused as a money-laundering centre by corrupt Russian and Ukrainian state officials and organised crime groups, a banking scandal in 2014 underlined the corruption and dysfunction of a state that has singly failed to meet the expectations of its citizens since independence. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has had a big impact on Moldova. Whether it can find a way to shake off the debilitating burden of Russian interference and affirm its identity as a European country, either independently, or reunified with Romania, remains to be seen. The opportunity is surely there.