# Transnistria > [!info] Not a country page > Transnistria is an unrecognized breakaway region of [[Moldova]] — no UN member recognizes it — filed here beside the country pages as a regional page, like [[Africa]]. For the full context see [[Post-Soviet States]]. **Transnistria** — officially the self-declared Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic — is the strip of land between the Dniester river and the Ukrainian border that broke from Moldova as the Soviet Union collapsed, and has been held since by a local regime, a business conglomerate and a Russian garrison. It is one of the frozen conflicts Russia maintains across the former Soviet space — and since 2025, the one under the most pressure. | Item | Detail | |---|---| | Declared | 2 September 1990 | | War | March–July 1992; roughly 700–1,000 killed, depending on the source; ceasefire agreement of 21 July 1992 created a trilateral Moldovan–Russian–Transnistrian peacekeeping force | | Recognition | No UN member; recognized only by [[Abkhazia]] and [[South Ossetia]] (and formerly by Nagorno-Karabakh's Artsakh, dissolved 2023) | | Population | About 368,000 (Moldovan estimate, March 2024) *[single-sourced]* | | Leader | Vadim Krasnoselsky since December 2016; next "presidential" election 13 December 2026 | | Russian forces | The Operational Group of Russian Forces — about 1,200–2,000 by different counts, mostly locally recruited under Russian officers — plus a peacekeeping contingent; and the Cobasna depot of Soviet-era munitions, estimated at up to 20,000 tons *[single-sourced]* | ## Who runs it Freedom House reports that the governing Renewal party "was established and is funded by Sheriff Enterprises," the conglomerate that also controls major media and the football club FC Sheriff Tiraspol. Transnistria is less a Russian province than a private economy under Russian military protection — a pattern the vault tracks under [[Oligarchy]]. ## The squeeze, 2024–2026 | Date | Development | |---|---| | 1 January 2024 | Moldova begins applying customs duties to Transnistrian firms | | 28 February 2024 | A congress in Tiraspol asks the Russian Duma for "measures for defending Transnistria," citing more than 220,000 Russian citizens in the region | | 1 January 2025 | Russian gas stops when Ukraine's transit deal expires; heating and hot water are cut and rolling blackouts reach eight hours a day | | 1 February 2025 | Gas resumes via Moldova, with EU funding — the region is now supplied through the government it broke away from | | March 2026 | Chișinău circulates a reintegration plan to Western partners: Russian troop withdrawal, an international civilian administration, Moldovan citizenship and amnesty — no special status | | 16 April 2026 | Moldova declares the Russian group's commander, Col. Dmitry Zelenkov, and five other officers persona non grata | | 1 September 2026 | First phase of tax integration begins, with full customs and tax parity targeted for 2030 *[single-sourced]* | Russia pledged to withdraw its forces in 1994 and again in 1999, with a 2002 deadline, and did neither. ## Why it matters here Transnistria is the clearest demonstration of how Russia's frozen conflicts work — and how they fail. The garrison, the passports and the separatist regime are designed to give Moscow a veto over Moldova's future. What broke the model was not military: it was the end of a gas transit deal, which left the region dependent on the EU-backed government in [[Maia Sandu]]'s Chișinău. Compare [[Georgia (country)]], where the same tools still hold about a fifth of the territory. ## See Also - [[Moldova]] - [[Maia Sandu]] - [[Post-Soviet States]] - [[Frozen Conflict]] — all the cases compared - [[Abkhazia]] and [[South Ossetia]] — Georgia's two Russian-held regions - [[Donbas War]] — the 2014 application of the same frozen-conflict model