Transdniestria: The Country that Doesn’t Exist

While in Moldova I had the opportunity to visit Tiraspol, the capital of the self-proclaimed country of Transdniestria. After the breakup of the USSR, there was a brief civil war in Moldova in which Transdniestria declared its independence from Moldova.

While I had heard that crossing the border into the Transdniestria often involved confiscation of money and bribes, I was not too worried. I just brought a small amount of money with me, so there wouldn’t be much to take.

After a forty-five minute ride from Chisinau, we arrived at the border. First we were briefly stopped by a Moldovan guard, and then passed some soldiers and old fortifications. Finally we reached the Transdniestrian border post where we filled in an immigration form and stood in line to have our passports checked over by an unsmiling border guard. No bribes were taken and we were let through the border.

The first difference between Transdniestria and Moldova is in the language. Moldova uses Latin letters and its official language is Romanian. On the other hand, Transdniestria uses Cyrillic and the most used language is Russian. The landscape wasn’t much different from Moldova. Huge communist-era apartment building jostled for space with primitive looking houses.

The capital of Transdniestria, Tiraspol feels very provincial and sleepy. While there, I saw few people walking down the wide streets. Unfortunately due to a holiday, many of the stores were closed. However, I was able to change money into Transdniestrian rubles and bought some Cognac, a product that is supposedly famous in the ‘country’. For lunch, we went to restaurant that served sushi (I didn’t order that), something that was unexpected in a provincial place such as Tiraspol.


The Transdniestrian Ruble is completely useless outside the country – no other country recognizes the existence of the Transdniestrian Republic. It was quite amusing to see the place really trying to be a ‘real’ country. There were lots of flags, and signs, and there was even an Abkhazian embassy, another unrecognized ‘country’ in Georgia. The public buildings were small and ugly. There was a parliament building, a national theatre, a national bank and even a memorial from the ‘war of liberation’ form Moldova.

There was a significant military presence in the country, but if you look carefully at the soldiers you will note that they are actually Russian. Russia has a military base in Transdniestria and support its existence. There were various military checkpoints and poorly camouflaged military equipment in various places. I’m no quite sure why Russia supports the existence of Transdniestria, but it probably wants to project its power in a region that it used to control as the USSR.

After a few hours in Tiraspol, I had seen everything and was ready to leave. I don’t feel the need to return. While interesting due to the political situation, Tiraspol really has nothing interesting to see.