Transnistria Concepts

Step by Step the Life in My Journeys

by Simon Reeve · 15 Aug 2019 · 309pp · 99,744 words

travelling anywhere without a trusty Leatherman and a small, powerful torch, because – time after time – carrying both has saved my skin. In the capital of Transnistria, an obscure, exotic breakaway state between Moldova and Ukraine, where manhole covers had been stolen and sold for scrap metal, my torch saved me from

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first destination was the largely unknown breakaway state of Somaliland, the inspiration for the entire project. A series of trips would also take me to Transnistria (between Moldova and Ukraine), Taiwan, Nagorno-Karabakh, also known as Artsakh, a landlocked region in the South Caucasus, and three regions of Georgia which broke

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gloomy about leaving Somaliland. We headed back home and I quickly repacked for the next trip to an unrecognised country on the edge of Europe. Transnistria, a sliver of a place between the former Soviet republics of Ukraine and Moldova, was an unofficial nation thought to be home to 400,000

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ties with Russia and Ukraine. There was a short but ferocious war and the land east of the Dniestr River became the unrecognised state of Transnistria. The little state’s campaign for recognition was not going well when I visited. The United Nations and the rest of the world said

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Transnistria was officially and legally part of Moldova. Only three other states had chosen to recognise Transnistria, and they were also unrecognised, so hardly counted. To get to the breakaway statelet I had to

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often tragic. We went to visit the President of Moldova. You can do that when you’re a BBC TV crew making a documentary about Transnistria. Along with the poverty, unemployment and migration, the breakaway state was perhaps the biggest issue affecting the nation. Liliana explained that President Vladimir Voronin’s

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mother lived in Transnistria and for the past two years he had been unable to visit her because of the border dispute with the breakaway territory. I feared my

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Moldovan town before he entered politics. He still had the air of someone involved in provincial middle-management. I asked him what he thought about Transnistria and whether anything was going on there that the rest of Europe should be concerned about. ‘It’s a hole,’ he said. ‘I cannot go

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and trafficking.’ He was angry, but it was an oft-repeated speech. ‘Moldova has a 480-kilometre border with the Ukraine and the section in Transnistria is not controlled, and via this there’s uncontrolled migration, contraband, arms trafficking, the trafficking of human beings and drugs. These operations are being legitimised

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by the separatist regime. There are thirteen enterprises in Transnistria that are producing arms non-stop.’ At that moment the President broke off from the chat because his aide announced he had caught a fish

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appeal of an unrecognised state. It is only around an hour by bus or car from the leafy Moldovan capital Chisinau to the border with Transnistria. Officially it was still part of Moldova and the border did not exist. But the reality on the ground was tanks, armed guards, bunkers, fortified

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was. We were visiting years after actual fighting had stopped, but each side feared it might erupt again at any moment. Just before we arrived Transnistria had upped the stakes by banning the teaching of Moldovan in schools, allowing only Russian. Moldova had responded with an economic blockade. If you looked

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at the situation on paper it would seem that tiny Transnistria could not survive the siege, but still they held out. We showed our passports to surly guards and soldiers, then drove and walked through what

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was essentially a demilitarised zone before crossing into Transnistria. I had arrived in my second breakaway state and felt a gentle sense of elation. Transnistria was quite the experience. I thought I had gone through a time warp. It was like visiting

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, we just do not carry out war with monuments,’ she said with a grin. Moldovans had warned me hungry armed men roam the streets of Transnistria, but although the border was tense, the leafy streets of Tiraspol were full of cafés and restaurants. People sat outside on cheap plastic chairs as

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goggle-eyed. But I also felt sorry for them. Years since they split, the ongoing tension between Moldova and Transnistria ensured both states were economically depressed and continued to suffer. The President of Transnistria, Igor Smirnov, was happy to explain why independence was so important. ‘It means the protection of all the

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up for a tricky follow-up question, he added that there were forty-six different nationalities in Transnistria and begged: ‘Please don’t ask me to list them all.’ There was a party atmosphere in Transnistria the day they celebrated independence. Cafés served great flagons of beer and we ate heartily. The

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their culture, their language, their resigned shrugs, and their ability to talk without moving their lips or using facial muscles. But ordering a meal in Transnistria became a right saga. After a couple of requests for meals were rejected we thought it best for the waiter to simply tell us what

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was available. He went off again, returning five minutes later. ‘Chicken. And potatoes.’ The first time we ate a meal in Transnistria we saw our food being chased around the yard outside. We knew it was fresh but then we waited two hours for it to be

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served. Cafés in Transnistria, I can say with absolute certainty, are the slowest on Planet Earth. So the next day we tried to ring ahead. Despite assurances to the

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moments I can still hear it rattling around in my head. Bulgaria and Romania were both waiting to join the European Union when I visited Transnistria. After they entered the bloc in 2007 that put the breakaway state right on the eastern edge of Europe. The EU is supposed to be

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committed to improving life for all, but critics say it has failed to adequately press for reform and change in Transnistria and other post-Soviet ‘frozen conflict’ zones. When I visited, Transnistria was thought to be a haven for smuggling. It certainly had a Wild West feel. Time and again we discovered

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a major producer of illegal arms, and the border with Ukraine was said to leak like a sieve. We drove to the south-east of Transnistria and I crossed the unguarded border on foot. I could see for myself how easy it would be for smugglers to traffic arms to the

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to anywhere on the planet. One of the main reasons for making the series was to highlight the risks of leaving unrecognised countries isolated, and Transnistria was a classic example. Guns from Transnistria have turned up in conflicts around the world. Russia was said to be calling the shots in

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Transnistria, so we drove north for a few hours and then crept through bushes to try and get shots of a secret Russian military base that

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four KGB heavies in trench coats jumped out. It was like a scene from a 1950s spy movie. The KGB had never been disbanded in Transnistria, and we were detained, marched away, and trucked off to cells in the secret police headquarters. Perhaps I had seen too many Cold War thrillers

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toenails for nibs. We were taken from the cells individually and questioned. Over and over they asked in halting English what we were doing in Transnistria and why we were trying to film the base. ‘Are we being arrested?’ I asked the officer. ‘No,’ he said. ‘You are being . . .’ he searched

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. ‘You cannot arrest these people,’ she wailed at him. ‘One of them is related to the Queen of England. You will bring terrible shame on Transnistria.’ There was a great banging of doors and clanking of keys. We all thought something awful was going to happen. Then a senior KGB officer

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smooth this over,’ he suggested. We were all released into the night and agents gave each of us KGB cap badges as souvenirs. We left Transnistria in a hurry fearing the KGB would change their minds and seize our tapes. We separated them out between us, hid them in our bags

McMafia: A Journey Through the Global Criminal Underworld

by Misha Glenny · 7 Apr 2008 · 487pp · 147,891 words

. “Before losing consciousness,” the somber Kapelyushny told me, “I at least noted that the car was registered in Transnistria.” Odessa is only sixty miles from the border with the Republic of Moldovan Transnistria, which looks and sounds like the perfect setting for a Tintin adventure. The small breakaway province from the Republic

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coterie of KGB officers and oligarchs, as well as an uncharacteristically forgiving attitude of Gazprom to the huge debt Transnistria has run up with the energy giant. During the conflict with Moldova, Transnistria held its own in large part because it happened to host both Russia’s Fourteenth Army and its mighty

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ranging from pistols to tanks and a handy supply of surface-to-air missiles. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Fourteenth Army in Transnistria was separated from the Russian motherland by the proclamation of an independent Ukraine. The army could have organized its return but preferred instead to remain

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in Transnistria as a “peacekeeping force.” But although the Fourteenth Army offered de facto support to Smirnov and the breakaway republic, Russia, like the rest of the

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world, refused to recognize Transnistria—it is a pariah state. The oil industry was the most lucrative industry in Odessa, but not far behind was the trade in illegal weapons

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from Ukraine and Transnistria. This had begun at the end of 1991 when Ukraine’s then president, Leonid Kravchuk, decreed the establishment of a commercial department at the Defense

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happened in Kuchma’s Ukraine. Yet even Kuchma and his friends projected a semblance of order and propriety in contrast to the neighboring republic of Transnistria. As Pavel Ciobanu ushers me into his Audi, I notice that he shares Karabas’s dress sense, sporting a black jacket over a black T

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-shirt. The late autumn sky darkens as we speed from Chisinau, the Moldovan capital, toward Tiraspol, capital of Transnistria. Instinctively, I clutch my wallet. Three days previously while traveling through Transnistria, I had been relieved of fifty dollars by the border guards, who were happy to keep me in illegal custody

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fan, Smirnov must have expended much effort in persuading the government of the self-styled Republic of Transnistria to go ahead with the construction of both the stadium complex and the team. After all, Transnistria’s annual budget amounts to just under $250 million. The stadium, in contrast, cost around $180 million

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. But then, Mr. Smirnov is both the head of the Customs Service of Transnistria and son of the president, Igor Smirnov. But not even the might of the president and his Communist Party could overcome the second hurdle facing

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of UEFA. But that’s been a problem ever since the Transnistrian authorities declared independence from Moldova—Tiraspol, capital of Transnistria, did not belong to a recognized UEFA country. So how would Transnistria be able to put FC Sheriff on show? They spent all that money on the stadium complex, and brought

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to cobble together a decent team by regional standards. The Football Federation of Moldova was, of course, recognized by UEFA. A deal was struck. Although Transnistria refuses to have anything to do with Moldova on any other official level, in matters soccer it concedes the sovereignty of Chisinau. The government in

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. Grigory Volovoy speaks in a wry monotone. As editor of Novaya Gazeta, he is one of the very few who dare raise their voices in Transnistria’s living gulag. “In the early 1990s, the population stood at 750,000. Now it is about 450,000. We have about 150,000 able

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much trickledown from Sheriff. There is, however, the phenomenon of trickle-up. In addition to the soccer club, Sheriff owns the biggest supermarket chain in Transnistria, as well as every single land and mobile phone line in the country (a snip in 2002 for $2 million). Although Russia is too coy

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to recognize Transnistria, Gazprom has been subsidizing gas supplies to the territory to the tune of $50 million a year for more than a decade. And Itera, the

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Florida-based company with links to Solntsevo, is the majority shareholder of the metallurgical plant in Ribnitsa, the highest export earner in Transnistria. But still you can’t help wondering whether all this could conceivably finance FC Sheriff and the stadium. Remember that stockpile of Russian weapons? And

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, indeed, the estimated two to three factories that produce weapons unmonitored? These spew out of Transnistria via Odessa and into the worlds of war—the Caucasus, central Asia, the Middle East, western and central Africa. Occasionally, President Putin suffers a crisis

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of conscience regarding Transnistria. “Maybe it is time to close down this black hole,” he told Georgi Purvanov when the Bulgarian president pleaded with Putin to dam the lava

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of criminality that flows down from Transnistria and spreads throughout the neighborhood. Bulgaria is used by various groups as an important staging point in the smuggling of weapons from Ukraine and

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Transnistria, and Purvanov understandably considers this most damaging for his country’s image. Putin mulled it over but decided against closing it down. A few years

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can bring down a 747. Each one is worth about $50,000. “There is enough kit in Transnistria to supply an entire army,” the officer said. “It is worth millions and it is deadly.” Transnistria is tiny—the size of Rhode Island. But it affects and debilitates countries across large parts of

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after the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, the new administration turned its attention to the problem. “If the border is securely sealed, the illegitimate authority in Transnistria will soon lose the economic foundation of its existence,” said the foreign minister Boris Tarasiuk in June 2005. Accusing the former president Kuchma of complicity

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, Tarasiuk continued, “The previous government used Transnistria as a springboard for contraband because the money chiefly flowed to Kiev. The situation has changed now. Ukraine is not interested in the existence of

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a welter of mutual accusations and a deteriorating economic situation, encouraged in no small part by energy “sanctions” imposed from Moscow. One perceptive analyst of Transnistria has suggested that the capacity of Moscow to dictate the politics of its “near abroad” (and thereby sustain rogue regimes like Tiraspol) has been shorn

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in arranging both her documentation and her travel. It is complicated for residents of Tiraspol, because their own country, the self-styled Republic of Moldovan Transnistria, is not recognized internationally and so they must apply for passports thirty-five miles away in the capital of their supposed archenemy, the Republic of

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Moldova. In fact, this accommodating acquaintance was a “recruiter.” A majority of women trafficked out of Moldova and Transnistria are groomed and recruited by other women. The recruiters are motivated above all by money, but there are often other forces at work. Some are

The Dawn of Eurasia: On the Trail of the New World Order

by Bruno Macaes · 25 Jan 2018 · 287pp · 95,152 words

. A COUNTRY THAT DOES NOT EXIST If you want to see what the struggle between different political models looks like, try the breakaway region of Transnistria, a narrow segment of Moldova situated between the river Dniester and the border with Ukraine. Once you cross the river, the great theatre play starts

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our part with sufficient irony and genuine amusement. A woman in the Vintage nightclub whispers in my ear: ‘This is Transnistria. Do not believe anything anyone says.’ The country of Transnistria is not recognized by anyone, not even Russia, but it functions with full autonomy and is capable of providing for public

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scratches his beard for a moment. In the past he has claimed that elements of the Romance, East Slavic and Turkic nations have intermixed in Transnistria, but now he is attracted by a different story, arguing that the Dniester was – before Suleiman – the boundary between Europe and the steppes, a continuous

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the city buildings, the answer comes quickly and with full assurance, something that should make Babilunga proud. During our meeting, he notes that people in Transnistria feel like Cossacks, frontier guards so distant from the centre they may be tempted to invent their own reality. ‘The poet Batyushkov came here in

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obsessed with politics and, above all, with the question of who has the power to organize social reality and to create powerful political myths. In Transnistria, the centre of political power is Russia: ‘The Russian world is ruled by Moscow.’ How the world first appears to you depends on where you

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stand. Even the name of the make-believe republic follows that logic. For Europeans, this land lies beyond the Dniester River, hence Transnistria; but for Russians it is the land just before arriving at the Dniester, so they will call it Pridnestrovie, from the Russian prefix for ‘towards

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Moldovan Republic. He hands me a thick volume of his Memoirs dealing with the crucial first two years after independence, including the military conflict in Transnistria, and cautiously instructs me on the final goals Russia has for the breakaway region. Snegur sees it as the mirror where the Russian soul appears

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in all the truth of its moral and political corruption. Transnistria is a place where the two sides of the contemporary Russian regime are clearly visible: an oligarchic system relying on money laundering, and a military

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2003 Dmitry Kozak, a close ally of Vladimir Putin, presented a draft constitution for a Federal Republic of Moldova aimed at settling the question of Transnistria and, in fact, guaranteeing Russian control over Moldovan politics. The new federation would consist of a federal territory and two federal republics

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: Transnistria and Gagauzia, an autonomous region of Moldova with a distinct ethnic composition. Crucially, the proposal created a vast number of shared competencies between the federation

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federal republics. All laws would have to be approved in a higher legislative chamber, or senate, where voting would be disproportionately tilted in favour of Transnistria and Gagauzia, which together would elect half the total number of senators. Integration with the European Union could easily be blocked by

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Transnistria and, therefore, by Moscow. President Voronin of Moldova initially supported the proposal, but widespread protests all over the country, especially in Chisinau, combined with open

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. The visit was cancelled. A particular sticking point was whether the Russian military deployment would be continued: this was non-negotiable for both Russia and Transnistria, but it did not look like a settlement of the problem for the wider Moldovan public opinion. At the time, Mircea Snegur stated publicly that

From Peoples into Nations

by John Connelly · 11 Nov 2019

“ghettos” on Bessarabian territory. Next, after occupying and then annexing territory of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic on the other side of the Dniester—called “Transnistria”—the Romanians set up camps there, where unknown numbers of Jews were killed.68 They permitted no regular food distribution, and some inmates attempted to

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as individual enterprise flourished, with new hairdressers, cafes, shops, taverns, and movie theaters. Rather than terrorize the local population, Romanian authorities allowed each village in Transnistria to vote on the language it wished to be taught to its children and set up a Ukrainian auxiliary police force.71 The Antonescu regime

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’s eagerness to kill Jews in Bessarabia and Transnistria had left the Germans convinced that it would follow through with the complete destruction of Jewry in the Romanian heartlands. Indeed, Antonescu had wanted to

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in social welfare, the Romanian Jewish community also mobilized to rescue some 2,000 orphans who had survived the punishing camps in Transnistria.78 FIGURE 17.4. Rescued orphans from Transnistria, with Anny (Hubner) Andermann. Source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Photo Archives #29844. Courtesy of Dr. Frederick Andermann. Copyright United States

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, as in Bulgaria and Romania, the first steps of killing innocent civilians involved Jews considered foreign: they lived in occupied Serbia, Thrace, and Macedonia, or Transnistria. But the murders of Jews in these places took place as momentum gathered against the “native” Jews, through the reduction of rights, the introduction of

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“native” Jews over for annihilation. Bulgaria and Romania stepped back from this precipice, though additional deportations occurred from once-Austrian Bukovina to killing camps is Transnistria in early and mid-1942. In Hungary, deportations to death camps occurred only after Germany occupied the country, but Hungarian officials fully cooperated. (In Eastern

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the Romanians in an unprofessional and sadistic manner” was one of the tasks of Einsatzgruppe D until the formal Romanian takeover of Bukovina, Bessarabia, and Transnistria, following the Tighina agreement of August 30, 1941. Browning, Origins, 277; International Commission, Final Report, 129, 133–134. 68. The deportations from Bessarabia/Bukovina to

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this region took place in fall 1941. Raul Hilberg speaks of 185,000 total deported to camps in Transnistria: Hilberg, Destruction, 495; International Commission, Final Report, 137, 140 (about 150,000). 69. Hilberg, Destruction, 496; Christian Hartmann et al., eds., Verbrechen der Wehrmacht: Bilanz

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of the Oeuvre de secours aux Enfants (the Jewish children’s welfare organization). When information became available about the plight of Jewish orphans stranded in Transnistria, Andermann organized a campaign with other women calling for their repatriation. Once they were safely on Romanian territory, the women endeavored to have them sent

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(New York, 2009), 393; International Commission, Final Report, 170–171; Obituary, The Independent (London), July 31, 2006. 79. Case, Between States, 188. 80. Ronit Fischer, “Transnistria” in Friedman, Routledge History of the Holocaust, 286. 81. Janos, Politics of Backwardness, 301. 82. Loránd Tilkovszky, “Late Interwar Years,” in A History of Hungary

The Last Empire: The Final Days of the Soviet Union

by Serhii Plokhy · 12 May 2014

republics and that border questions would have to be decided by referendum in the border regions. He referred specifically to the Crimea, Odesa, and Moldovan Transnistria. The irony of the situation was that the elites in the regions mentioned by Popov had welcomed the coup, and most of their inhabitants showed

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territory could be invited to join the Commonwealth. That approach would automatically exclude Moldova, which was trying to rein in its predominantly Slavic region of Transnistria; Azerbaijan, which was striving to retain its predominantly Armenian-settled region of Nagornyo-Karabakh; Armenia, which was involved in the Karabakh conflict; and probably Georgia

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proposal, the Almaty meeting had to take a stand on the breakaway regions. As the date of the Almaty meeting drew closer, two breakaway regions, Transnistria in Moldova and Nagornyo-Karabakh in Azerbaijan, applied for membership in the Commonwealth before their “home” republics did so. Meanwhile, Russia recognized the independence of

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” authorities in the republics. On Russia’s initiative, they had issued a statement supporting the Moldovan leadership in its effort to crush Slavic separatism in Transnistria. The Slavic presidents were insisting on the inviolability of existing borders and placing legal principle above ethnic solidarity with fellow Slavs. Their unanimity on those

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, Armenia, and Georgia to establish some form of control over Soviet troops on their territory or the efforts of leaders of the breakaway regions of Transnistria and Nagornyo-Karabakh to do the same in their jurisdictions. No less dangerous to the unity of the armed forces was the decision of the

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the Russian autonomies against Boris Yeltsin and tried to support rebellious autonomies in other post-Soviet states, including Abkhazia and South Ossetia in Georgia and Transnistria in Moldova. What is now considered Vladimir Putin’s invention—an aggressive policy of integrating former Soviet republics into common institutions and opposing Ukraine’s

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Moiseev, Mikhail, 81, 127, 135, 136, 137–138 Moldova (Moldavia), 50, 65, 193 CIS and, 360, 361 local nationalism in, 34 sovereignty and, 173, 178 Transnistria, 177, 360, 361, 362 U.S. and, 382 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939, xviii, 34, 193, 301, 369, 400 Morozov, Kostiantyn, 287–291, 324 Moscow

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and His Team (Gaidar, A.), 215 Titarenko, Raisa. See Gorbacheva, Raisa Tolstoy, Leo, 41, 103 Trade. See Most-favored-nation trade status Transcarpathia, 282, 283 Transnistria, 177, 360, 361, 362 Treaties Anti-Ballistic Missile, 51 borders, 176 Limited Nuclear Test-Ban, 6 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939, xviii, 34, 193, 301

Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Explain Everything About the World (Politics of Place)

by Tim Marshall · 10 Oct 2016 · 306pp · 79,537 words

Moldova. A number of countries that were once members of the Soviet Union aspire to closer ties with Europe, but with certain regions, such as Transnistria in Moldova, remaining heavily pro-Russian, there is potential for future conflict. Moldova presents a different problem for all sides. An attack on the country

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collapse of the USSR, once more Russia had to retreat eastward. However, in effect, the Russians do already control part of Moldova—a region called Transnistria, part of Moldova east of the Dniester River that borders Ukraine. Stalin, in his wisdom, settled large numbers of Russians there, just as he had

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in Crimea after deporting much of the Tatar population. Modern Transnistria is now at least 50 percent Russian- or Ukrainian-speaking, and that part of the population is pro-Russian. When Moldova became independent in 1991

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the Russian-speaking population rebelled and, after a brief period of fighting, declared a breakaway Republic of Transnistria. It helped that Russia had soldiers stationed there, and it retains a force of two thousand troops to this day. A Russian military advance in

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Moldova is unlikely, but the Kremlin can and does use its economic muscle and the volatile situation in Transnistria to try to influence the Moldovan government not to join the EU or NATO. Moldova is reliant on Russia for its energy needs, its crops

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in Europe. Now the Russians regularly fly missions aimed at testing European air defense systems and are busy consolidating themselves in South Ossetia, Abkhazia, Crimea, Transnistria, and eastern Ukraine. They maintain their links with the ethnic Russians in the Baltics, and they still have their exclave of Kaliningrad on the Baltic

Geography of Bliss

by Eric Weiner · 1 Jan 2008 · 361pp · 111,500 words

. Vitalie gives me a how-much-time-do-you-have look. “Well, there is the problem of Transnistria,” he says. “Can’t antibiotics take care of that?” I ask. It turns out that Transnistria is not a disease but a breakaway republic, a thin strip of Moldova controlled by pro-Russian forces

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. They make Cognac and textiles in Transnistria. Every once in a while, a bomb goes off, and mediators from Brussels fly in, wearing double-breasted suits and drinking Evian water. Conferences are

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held, and resolutions resolved. Then the men from Brussels fly home. Until the next bomb. Vitalie declares the whole Transnistria situation “definitely dumb,” and I’m inclined to agree. Later, I’d detect a strange pride that some Moldovans take in

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Transnistria, as if they’re thinking, “Yes, we are a backward, profoundly unhappy nation, but at least we have our very own breakaway republic, just like

The Despot's Accomplice: How the West Is Aiding and Abetting the Decline of Democracy

by Brian Klaas · 15 Mar 2017

, after the ruling authoritarian Moldovan Communist Party rejected a Russian proposal on how to deal with the 195 THE DESPOT’S ACCOMPLICE breakaway region of Transnistria in 2005, Putin actively backed the much more strongly pro-democracy opposition.11 Of course, this is an outlier. Russia overwhelmingly supports despots above democrats

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, 205–12, 214, 221, 229 1996 Commonwealth with Belarus established, 194 2002 proposal for re-integration of Belarus, 194 2005 support for Moldovan opposition on Transnistria, 195–6; Russia Today established, 207 2010 Putin sings Fats Domino’s Blueberry Hill, 207 2013 endorsement of Azerbaijani election, 211 2014 annexation of Crimea

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Reuel, 20, 161–3, 165, 176 Tongdaeng, 165 torture, 11, 28, 43, 48, 52, 124–7, 132, 139, 141, 222, 224 Trans-Pacific Partnership, 153 Transnistria, 196 transparency, 26, 82, 170, 174, 212, 218 Tripoli, Libya, 77 Trojan War, 22 Trump, Donald, 1, 20, 25, 79, 178, 180, 187, 188, 204

The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America

by Timothy Snyder · 2 Apr 2018

in Bosnian towns and UN-declared “safe areas” where ethnic cleansing and mass rape took place. He had also fought in Russia’s wars in Transnistria and Chechnya, and had written about these experiences for media edited by the fascist Alexander Prokhanov. Girkin spent the days between January 22 and February

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cannot be fulfilled, since the point of freezing a conflict is to prevent any resolution. Antyufeyev had spent the previous stage of his career in “Transnistria,” a section of Moldova occupied by Russian soldiers, where he had been in charge of security for the unrecognized ministate. His arrival in Donetsk heralded

Like Dreamers: The Story of the Israeli Paratroopers Who Reunited Jerusalem and Divided a Nation

by Yossi Klein Halevi · 4 Nov 2014 · 752pp · 201,334 words

, the Hasenfratzes, together with tens of thousands of other Romanian Jews, were deported by the fascist Iron Guard to an area of the Ukraine called Transnistria, beyond the Dniester River. Lacking the Final Solution’s thoroughness, the Romanians placed some Jews in camps, shot others, and allowed still others to die

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, he answered in Hebrew. His father, Yaakov, a gentle man who walked about singing cantorial snippets, was nearly deaf, the result of a beating in Transnistria; and deafness wasn’t just a physical but a cultural condition. Every morning, Yaakov, who worked as a lumber inspector, set off for his office

City of Exiles

by Alec Nevala-Lee · 1 Dec 2012 · 341pp · 104,493 words

The Marshall Plan: Dawn of the Cold War

by Benn Steil · 13 Feb 2018 · 913pp · 219,078 words

IBM and the Holocaust

by Edwin Black · 30 Jun 2001 · 735pp · 214,791 words

Lonely Planet Eastern Europe

by Lonely Planet, Mark Baker, Tamara Sheward, Anita Isalska, Hugh McNaughtan, Lorna Parkes, Greg Bloom, Marc Di Duca, Peter Dragicevich, Tom Masters, Leonid Ragozin, Tim Richards and Simon Richmond · 30 Sep 2017