That's Stefan cel Mare, historic leader of Besarabia back in the day when Columbus sailed the ocean blue. Moldovan history sites him as the man who could pull the different tribes together from around here into a united kingdom. Not an easy task as evidenced even by today's challenges of ethnic differences. The second picture describes some common bank services. If you take a close look at it, you notice that it's in Romanian and Russian. That's the story here in Moldova. We are bi-lingual with one official language, Moldovan. Next you see a playbill here in Moldova for the outstanding dance troop Sukhishvili from the country of Georgia. You remember Georgia, the country that was invaded by Russia in 2008. Russian troops remain to this day in their disputed boarder area. The parade of soldiers you see are Moldovans in Chisinau last Sunday. It was the 22nd Memorial of the Transnistria Conflict. One of Moldova's states didn't want to join a country back in 1990 that spoke Romanian. They wanted to stay connected to Russia and so there was a conflict, a short civil war that lasted 6 months. The Russian army stepped in and defended the separatists from the Moldovan army. A cease fire was made. The Russian army is there to this day. Transnistria is either an autonomous region of Moldova, a no man's land, or a separate soviet republic, depending on your point of view. The parade continued to the cemetery. I guess that's where all armed conflicts end up.
Nice observation at the end about conflicts ending up at the cemetery. Where have all the flowers gone? So many similarities between Transnistria then and Crimea now. Too many trips to that cemetery, I fear, before the whole thing is resolved.
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