Transnistria: 3 Days in the Country That Does Not Exist
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In November 2019, on a month-long trip through 14 former communist countries, I spent 3 days in a place most maps do not show. Transnistria has its own government, its own army, its own border posts and its own money. Almost no country in the world recognises it.
I crossed in on the evening of 10 November and left on the evening of the 12th. This is what those 3 days looked like, from my photos.
What is Transnistria?
Transnistria is a thin strip of land on the east bank of the Dniester River. On paper, it is part of Moldova. In practice, it has run itself since a short war in 1992, with its own government, army, currency and border posts.
So you might be thinking, is it a real country or not? That depends on who you ask. To the United Nations, it is Moldova. To anyone changing money in Tiraspol, it is very real, and the banks have exchange boards to prove it.
What money do they use?
The Transnistrian rouble. It exists nowhere else, so you change money when you arrive and spend it before you leave. Our tour notes even made a point of it: there are ATMs, “even Transnistria!”
On my first evening, at 19:40, I took a photo of a bank’s exchange board. A US dollar bought 16.30 roubles. A euro bought 17.90. The board listed only three currencies against the rouble, each with a buy and a sell price, and the Moldovan leu, the money of the country Transnistria officially belongs to, was the only one worth less than a single rouble.
The same evening we walked past a big Sheriff supermarket. The name Sheriff kept turning up. Over the next 2 days I photographed its name on a supermarket and on a poster for its own tennis club.
What is Tiraspol like?
Tiraspol is the capital. The next morning started at a big red and green sign with the city’s name on it, in the colours of the Transnistrian flag.
From there it was a walk through the Soviet Union, more or less. A tall Lenin stands in front of a long government block, arm swept back. A row of flags lines the square in front of the statue of General Suvorov, who founded the city in 1792. The state emblem still carries the hammer and sickle.
The war memorial has an eternal flame, a memorial wall dated 1990 to 1992, rows of graves and a T-34 tank on a plinth. Beside it, a black stone carries the radiation symbol and a picture of the Chernobyl plant. I had been at Chernobyl itself 3 days before.
Around midday we reached the House of Soviets. Its name is written in big letters under a clock tower, a bust of Lenin stands at the front, and the columns are painted in red, green and blue stripes.
What is outside the capital?
In the early afternoon we crossed the river on a small car ferry, a floating deck with 3 vans parked on it.
Then came Chitcani and the Noul Neamt Monastery. Chitcani is one of the oldest villages recorded in Moldova, dating back to 1367. Under Soviet rule the monastery was closed and used as a hospital, a storehouse and then a museum. Today the ceiling of its gate is painted from edge to edge, with Christ in the centre and saints all around.
The next morning, on the way to Bender, we stopped at a street market. One seller had a whole board of Soviet medals and ribbons for sale.
Then a limestone cliff with a red star carved into the rock above a row of dark openings. Behind them is an old quarry, and you walk through its tunnels with torches. The ceilings are low and the walls are stacked with cut stone.
What is Bender like?
Bender sits on the other bank of the river, inside the buffer zone set up at the end of the 1992 war. Its fortress, Tighina, was one of the important strongholds of the old Principality of Moldova.
The town’s amusement park was the strangest stop. The bumper cars are still in the rink, red, green and orange, with their bonnets cracked. There is a little Ferris wheel and a ride of swinging chairs, all faded. Nobody was riding anything.
At the railway station, a black steam locomotive stands on display with a red star on its nose. Inside the station is a canteen called Stolovka USSR, which is roughly “the USSR canteen”. It has red banners on the walls and a hammer and sickle by the door.
We had borscht there in the late afternoon. By sunset we were on the bus out, two days after we had come in from Odessa, with a camera roll full of Lenins, red stars, faded rides and a currency nobody else in the world will take.
Can you still visit Transnistria?
It is much harder than in 2019. My route came in from Odessa in Ukraine. Ukraine has since closed its border with Transnistria, and the US State Department’s Moldova advisory of July 2026 tells Americans to reconsider travel to Transnistria because of the risk of armed conflict.
Entry from the Moldovan side still exists, through checkpoints run by the Transnistrian authorities. Checkpoint rules are unpredictable, and photos of military sites can get you detained. So check your own government’s advice first.
Where does it fit in the trip?
Transnistria was 1 of the 14 countries on my Eastern Europe trip, and the only one that no other country recognises. The day before it, I was underground in a Soviet missile base, which I wrote up in Chernobyl and a Nuclear Missile Base: Two Days in Cold War Ukraine. The rest of the trip is in Exploring Eastern Europe and communism: 14 countries in 1 month.
The trading came along the same way it always does, in about 15 minutes a day. I wrote up how that works in how I trade while travelling. Every trip is on the travel log, and more photos are on Instagram, @iamrecneps.
Would you visit a country that officially does not exist? Let me know in the comments.
Spencer Li
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