The Transnistria War
Fighting between Moldova and separatists in Transnistria ran from March to July 1992 and ended with a Russian army in the middle. Transnistria is a strip of land east of the Dniester river, about 400,000 people, that had been part of the Soviet Union since 1924 while the rest of Moldova was Romanian until 1940. It held a large share of the republic's industry and power generation, and a population more Russian and Ukrainian than the Romanian-speaking west. The trigger was language. Moldova made Moldovan the state language in 1989 and switched it back to the Latin script, and the prospect of unification with Romania alarmed a region whose managers and workers had been Russian-speaking for two generations. It declared itself a separate Soviet republic in 1990 and independent in 1991. The war proper began in March 1992 and was fought around the bridges and the city of Bender, with perhaps a thousand killed. What decided it was the Soviet 14th Army, stationed in Transnistria with an enormous arms depot at Cobasna. Its commander from June was Alexander Lebed, who shelled Moldovan positions, said publicly that he could reach Bucharest in two hours, and stopped the war in about a week. A ceasefire in July established a joint peacekeeping force and left Russian troops in place. They are still there, and so are some 20,000 tonnes of ammunition. Transnistria is recognised by nobody, and has its own currency, army and passports. It is the oldest of the frozen conflicts on Russia's periphery, and the template for what followed in Georgia and Ukraine.
- Year: 1992 CE
- Category: Military
