I’ve been on holiday to a country that doesn’t officially exist. It has its own border, passport, flag, currency and army but no one recognises it – not even its main sponsor, Vladimir Putin. Transnistria is sandwiched between its proper motherland Moldova – which is itself really Romania – and Ukraine, which Putin thinks is part of his motherland. Confused? It doesn’t get any easier. 

In 1992 there was a short war between the newly created state of Moldova and separatist, ethnic Russians which resulted in nearly 1,000 deaths and the breakaway ‘country’ (via a peace accord) policed by Russian ‘peacekeepers’.  They are the first troops you see when you reach the Moldova/Transnistria border and collect your 12-hour, flimsy paper visa. Armed but disinterested, they waved us through to the next checkpoint where more soldiers did the same. 

Sadly, I’m old enough to have visited the Soviet Union in the mid-1980s and entering Transnistria is very much like a trip back to the USSR. A smattering of Ladas, officials in Mr Byrite-esque ill-fitting suits, busts of Lenin, a brutalist Parliament building still called the House of Soviets and a T34 commemorative tank in the capital Tiraspol’s main square are all a throwback to the inglorious days of the first communist state. 

To be frank, it’s a weird place. A bacon rasher of land occupying around 1,600 square miles, Transnistria is stuck in........

© The Spectator