Moldova

A country split by a river and by an argument about what its people are. The historical principality of Moldavia straddled the Prut, and the eastern half, Bessarabia, was taken by Russia in 1812 while the western half went on to help form Romania. Bessarabia joined Romania in 1918, was seized by the Soviet Union in 1940 under the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, and was made a republic combined with a strip of industrial land east of the Dniester that had never been part of Moldavia. Soviet policy insisted that Moldovan was a separate language from Romanian, wrote it in Cyrillic and constructed a national identity to match, and whether the two are one language remains a live political question rather than a linguistic one. Independence in 1991 was followed within months by war in that eastern strip, where Transnistria seceded with Russian army support and has existed unrecognised ever since, with Russian troops still stationed there. The country is among Europe's poorest, dependent on remittances and on agriculture, especially wine. Large-scale emigration has cut the population sharply. Gagauzia, a Turkic Orthodox minority region, holds autonomy. Moldova was granted EU candidate status in 2022. Its energy supply has repeatedly been used as leverage. Chisinau is the capital. The country is landlocked apart from a few hundred metres of Danube frontage giving it a port at Giurgiulesti. Cricova's underground wine cellars run for tens of kilometres. Both Romanian and Russian are widely spoken. Transnistria still uses Soviet symbols on its flag and issues its own unrecognised currency.

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