Fear of Russian Troops in Village Engulfed by Transnistria

• Insider traveled to a small, isolated village that borders Transnistria.
• Transnistria is a breakaway region supported by Russia, which stations around 1,500 troops there.
• Locals said they fear the war in Ukraine could spread to their homes in Moldova.

MOLOVATA NOUĂ, Moldova — Victor Besleaga remembers well the start of the war that killed his brother. It was dark when Russian troops surrounded the station in Dubăsari, a 20-minute drive from the border with Ukraine, where he was working as a police officer.

Less than a year earlier, in 1991, Moldova had declared independence from the Soviet Union — and, according to the propaganda that helped spark a conflict that killed hundreds, it was now oppressing Russian speakers in a region that today is known as Transnistria, a breakaway republic aligned with Moscow but unrecognized by the international community.

A firefight broke out, leaving one of the soldiers dead; to save their own lives, the police soon gave up their arms and surrendered. Victor remembers being transported to Tiraspol, the self-proclaimed capital of Transnistria, and paraded before cameras broadcasting back to Russia. Overnight, this veteran of the Soviet military, trained as a paratrooper in Belarus, had become a “Romanian Nazi infiltrator.” 

He spent the next month gasping for air in a tiny basement cell, packed in with 14 others, before being released in a prisoner swap. He went straight to the hospital — and from there, rejoined the police and fought to retake the city he served in.

Today, Victor, 50, with salt-and-pepper hair, gray-blue eyes and wearing a black Champion tracksuit, lives in the village where he was born, Molovata Nouă, speaking in the classroom he attended as a child, now a local history museum run by his wife. It is a 15-minute drive (and a Russian military checkpoint away) from the city where he once worked as a cop.

There is no bridge to this village, where 10 people died in the conflict that began in the darkness of March 2, 1992, and concluded some four months later. Five of the deceased were combatants who fought to keep it part of Moldova.

They prevailed. But today the village is an isolated enclave surrounded by a hostile entity. The government of Russian President Vladimir Putin insists the residents of Transnistria, next door and all around the village, are still being oppressed. There have been claimed terrorist incidents there, pinned…