Article by: Mae Bryant and Isabella Fattore
We stumbled upon it, as many young people do, late one night watching videos online— “The Country That Doesn’t Exist,” or Transnistria, a de facto state in eastern Moldova under Russian occupation, where remnants of the Soviet Union lie untouched.
In the beginning of 2025, the contract allowing Russian gas to flow through pipelines in Ukraine ended without renewal, effectively cutting off direct gas supply for Transnistria, sparking further tensions amid the ongoing war in Ukraine.
Despite this, the region continues to attract soviet-nostalgic tourists seeking the architecture, relics, and culture of a bygone era. Curiosity withstanding, we decided to become these tourists.
In late January, we flew from Prague to Bucharest, and took the so-called last Soviet-era night train to Chisinau. While traveling, we contacted a five-star rated tour guide based in Tiraspol, the capital city of Transnistria, who promised a “tailored” adventure across the region.
We arranged the logistics of our 3 hour long tour, which would cost us 38 euros each, but did not include transportation across the Moldovan-Transnistrian border. With our American passports, and lack of experience, we felt apprehensive about crossing the border on our own.
“[The border] it’s very easy unless you make it complicated,” our guide explained over WhatsApp, “We are a fragile oasis.”
A 2 hour bus from Chisinau to Tiraspol would cost just 4 euros, but we decided to hire a private driver for 30 euros in order to have a Russian speaker communicate with the border patrol.
The next morning, we grabbed our passports and left our cameras behind, getting into our hired car. Our driver, a friend of our guide, stopped along the way to show us Soviet mosaic encrusted bus stops and a statue of Vladimir Lenin, making the drive a tour in itself.
However, the mood sombered as we approached the border, the car coming to a stop in front of the patrol. Our driver pointed to two uniformed men holding rifles on either side of the road, telling us: “Transnistrian soldier on the right; Russian soldier on the left.”
Our driver handed our passports to the border patrol, and within five minutes, they were returned to us with 12-hour paper visa slips inside, no questions asked.
The scenery changed instantly as we drove through Bendery, a small town along the border. The Russian influence visible in the Cyrillic road signs, the Soviet style buildings, and, most notably, in the military barracks stationed along the way, which house up to 1,500 soldiers in the region.
Foreign bank accounts don’t work in Transnistria, so we exchanged our Moldovan Lei for Transnistrian Rubles, the only currency in the world with plastic coins. Then, we met with our guide in a Tiraspol cafe.
The first stop on our tour was at the Lenin Monument of Dom Sovietov in front of the Tiraspol City Hall, where our guide provided Soviet-era hats to wear for a photoshoot.
Technically, he told us, pictures weren’t allowed in front of government buildings, but pictures in front of Lenin were always allowed.
At our next location, the Monument to Aviators, our guide took more photos and showered us with historical information. Without mentioning it to each other, we both noticed a man watching us intently. This made us slightly nervous as Transnistria is known to have secret police–another distinct reminder of the lingering Soviet-era.
After the photoshoot with our guide broke the ice between us, we sat in his car and attempted to ask about his experience living in an unrecognized country.
At first, he played on our preconceptions of Transnistria. Yes, it was a place trapped in a crumbling freeze frame of Soviet life, with buses driving by untouched since the 70s’ and
Russian flags on every corner. But, it was also a place forced to outwit the limitations of being unrecognized.
He described to us how his passport, bank account, and license plate were all useless outside of Transnistrian borders, and all the inventive ways he gets around these restrictions.
The underlying question became, why stay at all?
Our guide quoted his wife as saying, “Pridnestrovie [Transnistria] is the best country in the world. We are the country with no past and no future.” He reaffirmed this when asked about the gas crisis, saying that he was unsure if the country would last much longer.
The longer we stayed, the more we could sense uncertainty in the air. We stopped in an antique shop, each of us buying a few vintage pins and postcards. Our guide adamantly expressed how thankful the shop owner was, saying how much it meant to them— that it was everything to them.
The tour ended with a climb to the top of an apartment complex, where a balcony revealed a view of nearly all of Transnistria, nestled between the borders of Ukraine and Moldova.
While looking out over “the country that doesn’t exist,” our guide gave us his final words of insight: “Being an unrecognized country, from the outside, seems like a big problem, but we on the inside see it as just an addition to life.”
