On the menu today: I have departed Ukraine and asked God to bless and protect its people as they endure this brutal war. (Then again, maybe we could give God a little help by sending some more air-defense systems.) My traveling companion and I crossed the border into Moldova, and we turned our attention to another contested stretch of land in this region. Readers, I know the current tensions surrounding Transnistria are foremost in your mind . . .
. . . I know the current tensions surrounding Transnistria have regularly been on your mind . . .
. . . I know the current tensions surrounding Transnistria have occasionally . . .
. . . Okay, when I mentioned I would be traveling to Transnistria, one of my family members thought I had made up the name. Who among us can find Transnistria on a map? Trick question! You won’t find Transnistria labeled on a lot of maps, because in the eyes of almost the entire world, it’s not a real country, it’s just a rogue region of Moldova that aspires to be a colony of Moscow. Come with me to “mini-Russia,” a spectacularly strange little stretch of land where hammers and sickles abound like the Cold War never ended.
Welcome to the Least-Visited ‘Country’ in Europe, Comrade!
Leave it to me to spend a week or so in Ukraine, a country currently being invaded by the Russian army, and then agree to take a day trip to Transnistria, one of the few countries in the world that still has a hammer and sickle on its flag, a place the New York Times accurately labeled, “a mini-Russia.”
I should say, “country,” with air quotes, because as far as almost all the rest of the world is concerned, Transnistria is just a rebellious region of Moldova that insists upon calling itself the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic. The only three other places on Earth that recognize Transnistria as an independent country are Abkhazia and South Ossetia (which are Russian-influenced disputed territories in Georgia), and Artsakh (which is a Russian-influenced disputed territory in Azerbaijan).
You probably noticed the pattern there. Transnistria is yet another Russian-influenced “frozen conflict” zone and disputed territory, a sliver of land in a narrow valley stretching north–south along the bank of the Dniester river, with Moldova on one side and Ukraine on the other. It is regularly described as the least-visited country — er, “country” — in Europe. And it is tiny; Transnistria’s thin strip of claimed territory adds up to 1,607 square miles. For comparison, the state of Delaware is 1,948 square miles.
Transnistria actually has two official flags. The first has a yellow hammer and sickle in the upper left corner against a red background, like the old Soviet flag, but with a big green stripe across it, as if someone had hastily attempted to turn it into a holiday logo for Christmas Communists. The second official flag is a duplicate of the current Russian flag, but with a slightly different ratio, 1:2 instead of 2:3. In other words, to the naked eye, this territory is covered with flags that are indistinguishable from those of Russia, and that is not an accident.
If Transnistria is not Russia, a lot of its citizens sure as heck want it to be. That second co-official flag is atop the parliament building and just about every other government building. A giant statue of Lenin stands in front of the parliament building, which is just a few blocks from Lenin Street. Logos, seals, and emblems with the hammer and sickle are everywhere. The country’s currency is the Transnistrian ruble.
There are Russian soldiers who serve as “peacekeepers” at the border checkpoints. (For the first time on this trip, I saw Russian armored personnel carriers that were in one piece.) Transnistria is reportedly home to 1,500 Russian soldiers, although it seems like it has been a while since anyone has published a reliable head count.
There are no photos in today’s Morning Jolt, because I didn’t bring my phone into Transnistria. The U.S. State Department lists Transnistria under the level-three warning — “reconsider travel” — just below level four, “do not travel.” The easiest way to avoid having any Russian-aligned government official or soldier going through my phone was to not have it there. You can find plenty of pictures of what I saw on the internet.
As the Cold War approached its end in 1989, most Moldovans began rejecting Soviet-imposed changes, passing laws that made Romanian the official language, adopted the Latin alphabet and rejected the use of Cyrillic, and beginning to embrace its own identity. But groups in communities along the eastern border still felt great affection for Russia and the Russian language and rejected those changes. Tensions grew until open shooting between the two sides broke out in March 1992, and Russia intervened, first by assisting the Transnistrian side and by brokering a ceasefire that left the tiny sliver of land controlled by the Transnistrians with a form of quasi-independence. Not much has changed in the 30 years since.
For all the Transnistrian Soviet nostalgia, the good news is that, at least for now, there’s little sign of any overt animosity between the Moldovan people and the Transnistrians. People travel back and forth across the border posts every day without incident. The Transnistrian government has stated it has no interest in getting involved in the war between Russia and Ukraine.
That is good, but the war is being fought on the Moldovan doorstep, Russians regularly fire missiles through Molodvan airspace, and missile debris keeps landing on the Moldovan side of the border. Last month, Russia sent drones to attack the port of Reni, which is about a mile from the Moldovan border and just across the Danube River from Romania. Our Moldovan guide for our journey to Transnistria told us that he worries a great deal about the war spilling over the border into his country.
Earlier this year, the Moldovan president, Maia Sandu, accused Vladimir Putin of attempting to overthrow the government by fomenting violence through foreign actors and internal criminal groups. Intriguingly, our guide asserted that this was not a big deal and he didn’t worry about it.
One major problem surrounding Transnistria is that Moldova would like to join the European Union someday, and when I say someday, I mean the government has set an explicit and public goal of 2030. The country has road signs that say, “Moldova EU 2030,” and pictures of the EU flag are in the windows of the offices of its border posts.
Moldova submitted its application to the EU last year and was granted “candidate status.” Countries that want to be in the European Union must have “the capacity to effectively implement the rules, standards and policies that make up the body of EU law and adherence to the aims of political, economic and monetary union.” A country’s government can’t do that if it has a rogue breakaway region that makes its own laws and uses its own currency.
Earlier this month, Sandu said of the breakaway region, “Perhaps, when Ukraine wins this war and returns its territories, a geopolitical opportunity will appear that will allow us to settle the conflict peacefully.” Eh, maybe, but that day seems far in the future. No one I spoke to in Ukraine expected the war to end anytime soon.
Our tour guide, a cheerful and gregarious Moldovan who had no ill will toward Transnistrians, mentioned he had seen a pair of Hungarian tourists the previous day and recognized their car parked in front of the Lenin statue. A few minutes later, we ran into them in the nearby “Memorial of Glory,” which features memorials to the soldiers of World War II, the Transnistria War, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, which occurred about 300 miles away.
The Hungarians’ tour guide, upon realizing I was American, felt the need to tell me that the Ukrainians were bombing themselves. If you’ve been reading this newsletter over the past two weeks, you know that I wanted to sock him, but I had enough good sense to recognize the headline “Transnistrian tour guide repeats insane Russian propaganda, American journalist attempts to strangle him” would be bad for everyone. I stared back in disbelief and confusion, and then pretended I didn’t understand him, telling him we were going to walk around the city for a bit. This confused him sufficiently, and after a few awkward moments, we all said goodbye and went our separate ways.
If you wanted me to get the Russian perspective on the war, there it is: Russia isn’t bombing the Ukrainians, the Ukrainians are bombing themselves.
I mean, even Alex Jones has his limits.
My traveling companion and I had lunch at USSR Canteen, which I can only describe as an effort to create a version of the Hard Rock Café chain, but for Josef Stalin. Busts of Lenin are everywhere, the walls were plastered with old Soviet art and newspaper headlines, old Soviet military uniforms, and portraits of Soviet leaders, and the television was showing some Russian soap opera.
I could see some people, particularly NR readers, objecting to dining in a Soviet Union-themed restaurant. If you believe the crimes of the Soviet state were anywhere close to the crimes of the Nazis, you could argue that a USSR-themed restaurant is as offensive as a restaurant whose décor and menu is meant to evoke the Third Reich. (We have only had Amazon plaster Nazi-style ads and posters all over a New York City subway car to promote The Man in the High Castle.)
I see the existence of the USSR Canteen as an example of the ultimate triumph of capitalism. Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev — they all thought they were going to conquer the world and move human history in a new direction. Today, they’re just kitsch. Sure, a themed restaurant using their faces and iconography is in business, but the Soviet Union itself went out of business 30 years ago. (I do recognize, however, the argument that Putin is attempting to recreate the Soviet Union as a gangster state, without all of that economically debilitating communism.) Soviet Communism is now just a schtick for a themed restaurant — just another version of Planet Hollywood, Rainforest Café, or the Bubba Gump Shrimp Company. It’s a gimmick for monetizing the nostalgia of the elderly who associate communism with the good old days. Of course, to the extent those days were good for those elderly, it’s not because Moldova was part of the Soviet Union. They felt good because they themselves were young back then.
(I would have loved to trash the Commie cuisine, but darn it, the roast chicken and chicken soup were pretty good.)
How narrow is Transnistria? Our guide drove us north out of the city, into farmland, and pointed to a small hill, explaining that Ukraine’s territory starts on the other side of that hill. We turned to a road to our left, and headed westward, and within three or four minutes we were at the border post to Moldova. Of course, to almost all the world, we were in Moldova the whole time.
One other wrinkle, over on the other side of Moldova, is the issue of potential unification with Romania. (I’ll bet you never realized Moldova was such a hotbed of international intrigue.)
There are a considerable number of Moldovans would like to be part of Romania. There’s a lot of shared culture, language, and history between the two countries, and for Moldovans who would like the benefits of EU and NATO membership, this would be like killing two birds with one stone. According to a 2021 poll, around 44 percent of Moldovans support unification. That’s not a majority, but it’s not that far from it.
As American citizens, the U.S. Constitution protects our right to never have to care about the Eurovision contest, a sort of continental musical Olympics that gets wrapped up in a great deal of national pride. Yes, I know it launched or advanced the careers of Abba, Olivia Newton John, Celine Dion, and Julio Iglesias. The only reason I bring it up is because the 2022 contest featured Moldovan singers Zdob şi Zdub & Advahov Brothers, and the song “Trenuleţul,” an exuberant little ditty about how much the Moldovans love Romania, and how the two countries are so similar they’re hard to distinguish. The video is worth a watch as a taste of Moldovan humor and a reflection of the yearning for unification. It’s hard to imagine American performers singing to any other country, even Canada or the United Kingdom, that we’re so similar that it’s hard to tell us apart:
Go fast, go quick
The train rocked by rails
But it can’t understand
Through which country it runs
An old country, a new country
It’s like one, it’s like two
Both apart, both together
It’s like two, it’s like one
Hey ho! Let’s go
Folklore and Rock’n’roll
The train is leaving! Where are you?
Chișinău to București
And now, dear readers, you know a lot more about Transnistria and Moldova than you probably ever expected to know.
ADDENDUM: In case you missed it yesterday, in the Washington Post, I profiled an extraordinary man, Rabbi Moshe Reuven Azman, the leader of the Brodsky Synagogue in central Kyiv, one of two men who claim the title of Chief Rabbi of Ukraine. (The dueling rabbis claiming the title stem from a complicated schism.) Azman has emerged as the more high-profile and celebrated of the two claimants, earning praise for his regular humanitarian missions to the country’s east and south, dangerous areas where the fighting is intense. If you do nothing else, watch the music video the rabbi recorded for Ukrainian Independence Day, a spectacularly effusive, earnest, full-throated musical expression of patriotism.
There were parts of what I heard and saw in Ukraine that were extraordinarily depressing and could tempt anyone to despair; I also met people who are remarkably inspiring and who could fan the flames of hope in the most hardened cynic. If you’ve been reading me for the past two weeks or so, thank you. You’ve made this whole journey worthwhile.