The self-declared Pridnestrovian Moldovan Republic, more commonly known as Transnistria, is a sliver of the former Soviet Socialist Republic of Moldova to the east of the Dniester River whose population is predominantly Ukrainian. In 1992 they fought a brief war of succession with the newly independent country of Moldova, as it forged its own way during the break up of the Soviet Union. The Ukrainian and Russian speaking communities of Moldova feared Moldovan cultural domination and the imposition of the Moldovan language and customs upon them, and they called in the Russian Armed Forces to protect them. In 2024 this might seem somewhat ironic: that a Ukrainian group of people called in the Russians to protect their civil liberties and independence. Nevertheless that in effect is what happened.
For a long time the conflict remained dormant, with about 1,500 Russian troops stationed in Transnistria to deter further Moldovan aggression or attempts to seize the territory for incorporation into a Moldovan state. The international community didn’t recognise Transnistria is an independent country, but didn’t do much to interfere with it either. The territory retained a certain Soviet-era charm, its crumbling capital Tiraspol the subject of classical music pumped into the streets, a fake political system in which everything was controlled by one man but whose activities were overseen in every detail by the Russian FSB, and Ukrainian and Russian were spoken in equal measure. Indeed in Tiraspol there is a “Ukrainian” end of the town, where the Ukrainian speakers live and congregate; and a “Russian” end of the town, where the imported Russian soldiers and their families live and it is possible to obtain things like Russian notarial services, Russian postal services, and pay in Russian rubles (Transnistria has its own ruble that has been remarkably stable).
It is very hard to learn all these things about Transnistria, because for years it was hard to travel there (they have their own border police) and you needed a good reason which there wasn’t one to have really unless you were going for a 1-2 day guided tour with an accredited tour agency. Nevertheless Tiraspol is only really a couple of hours from the Moldovan capital Chisinau, albeit down some bumpy roads.
The fortunes of Transnistria really started to change in 2016 when Moscow ejected the previous puppet leader for incompetence and corruption and installed the current President, Vadim Krasnoselsky, to promote economic development if not democratic reforms. Krasnoselsky transformed Tiraspol in particular into a gas-funded oligarchy in which everything was run or controlled by him. The source of the revenue for Transnistria was a company called TiraspolTransGas, which simply owned the extensive gas pipes running from Russia through Ukraine through Transnistria to Moldova and beyond in the EU. It was a very easy business model; TiraspolTransGas simply took a commission for allowing the gas to pass from Ukraine to Moldova through its tiny territory. With this significant revenue stream Krasnoselsky, an ethnic Ukrainian, could do a lot to improve the quality of life of Transnistria’s much impoverished population of around 450,000 people. He set up a chain of modern supermarkets, a football club with a giant modern stadium, a couple of hotels, a series of construction projects, some modern shops, and Tiraspol started to feel quite normal.
It may well have been that the increasing affluence of Tiraspol was part of the Moldovan drive to join the EU: Moldova, a very poor country, did not want to be outdone by its secessionist rival.
So the people of Transnistria became relatively affluent, compared to how they had been living before; Tiraspol started to look like a decent small city, full of bars and restaurants; the university in Tiraspol, widely admired in the former Soviet Union, started again to attract Russian speaking students from across the Commonwealth of Independent States; and Tiraspol underwent a renaissance, jammed between Moldova proper and Ukraine, just an hour’s drive from the port and vacation city of Odesa in Ukraine.
When the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine began, the people of Transnistria were effectively instructed to stay quiet. Vladimir Putin ordered Krasnoselsky to close the border with Ukraine, which he did and which remains closed today. The remaining Russian soldiers in Transnistria were stranded; many did everything they could to leave Transnistria via Moldova while the option was still available and to return to Russia. It is estimated today that there are only a few hundred Russian soldiers and their families at most remaining in Transnistria, plus probably the same number of FSB officials, and those are the Russians who have grown up in and integrated into Transnistrian society. Nevertheless it is a distinct oddity to have a parastate essentially composed of Ukrainian natives protecting itself from Moldovan takeover with Russian troops while a war rages between Russia and Ukraine just next door.
So far the Transnistrians have managed to stay out of that war by staying studiously quiet, even as there were incidents such as their Chief of Police going off to fight for the Ukrainian Armed Forces against Russia. Such things were discouraged but Transnistrians got on with their lives. Then they became a little more paranoid, and it became more difficult to visit Transnistria (which had opened up a little to foreigners). I was banned for three years from visiting there in 2023 on national security grounds and deported in the middle of the night. I wonder whether the Transnistrian authorities have come to rue that decision. Because on 1 January 2025, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky did something that will inevitably devastate the Transnistrian economy: he turned off all the gas supplies that had been running from Russia through Ukraine to Europe notwithstanding the war. The reason he had been permitting this gas to flow was because Russia was continuing to pay Ukraine sums in the billion of dollars per annum notwithstanding the war by way of transit fees for the gas. Western funding for the Ukrainian economy came with the negotiated condition that this source of revenue would be turned off, to decrease western reliance on Russian gas still further.
This would inevitably of course be devastating for the Transnistrian economy, as TiraspolTransGas now has no commission it can take for Russian gas passing from Ukraine to Moldova via Transnistrian territory. This not only means that the people of Transnistria are freezing this winter, as they have no heating; it also means that the various glossy businesses in Tiraspol have no more subsidies and there are no more healthy wages for Transnistrian civil servants to spend in up-scale Tiraspol bars. In short, the economy there is due for total collapse.
Faced with this dilemma, Transnistrian people can move to Moldova proper - they are all entitled to Moldovan passports - or to Ukraine - most of them have Ukrainian passports. The territory is likely to empty out of people. President Krasnoselsky, who has proven a fairly pragmatic and light-handed autocrat, has a political decision to make and he had might as well make it fairly quickly before his economy collapses and while the world is taking notice of his tiny territory. He can either negotiate a federalisation agreement with Moldova, ensuring equal rights for Ukrainian speakers and having Transnistria as a separate federal unit of Moldova supported by EU money as part Moldova’s EU succession process (as has happened with another autonomous entity in Moldova, Gagauzia); or he can join Ukraine as his people are essentially Ukrainians who have had it easy in this remote region during the war.
The former would require substantial democratic reforms; the latter would incur Moscow’s ire but the front line is an awfully long way away and it seems unlikely that Russia would do much about it. In either case, Russia’s reaction is the risk he has to take. Either step involves risking the actions of Vladimir Putin that can be highly erratic and unpredictable; but his alternative is depopulation of Transnistria as the economy plummets and people freeze in the cold winters there.
Whatever President Krasnoselsky chooses, and whenever he chooses to act, democracy is on the cards in Transnistria. Joining Moldova proper might allow him to stay in power for a few more years but at some point there will need to be free and fair elections; the EU will insist upon it. Joining Ukraine entails risking a half-hearted but potentially lethal Russian military response. Staying somehow “Russian” amidst all this turmoil, jammed between two firmly pro-western countries, entails political, economic and social ruin. So he has to do something. This is the stage at which western diplomats should be reaching out to Krasnoselsky, who himself undoubtedly wants rid of the Russians remaining in Transnistria but is afraid of them, and one possibility is to internationalise the territory for a period with NATO troops who keep the peace and remove the Russian moles.
Transnistria is due to face some very hard choices, and the West must help them. In all likelihood they cannot do it on their own.