Sandwiched between Moldova and Ukraine and born from a post-Soviet civil war that saw the remnants of the mighty Soviet Army, Russian separatists, and the Moldovan government go head to head in a brutal civil war, Transnistria is one of the world’s grey areas on the map. Transnistria is unrecognized by almost the entire world, except for its fellow breakaway state brothers who are also equally unrecognized in varying degrees. 

The Transnistrian Civil War aside, the region has been defined by turbulent history and warfare throughout the centuries. The Ottomans came through here and fought the forces of Swedish Kings on Transnistrian soil. In WW2 the territory was decimated by Operation Barbarossa and the subsequent Soviet warpath into the Balkans and onto Berlin.

Transnistria has served as a crossroads for countless empires and cultures. As a result, it’s a country that features unrivaled access to a plethora of cultures, languages, and history. Alongside the ethnic Russian population, this is a place where you can find surviving descendants of the Bessarabian and Black Sea Germans as well as members of the Bessarabian Bulgarian community who settled here when they fled the warpath of the Ottoman Empire.

Once a war-torn, no-go zone, Transnistria has advanced in great strides in recent years and is now a safe and fascinating destination packed with unbeatable history and Soviet nostalgia. We’ve been running tours to the country when it was a no-go area and we continue to do so today. As a result, we are the unrivaled travel fixers to Transnistria.

Every year, Young Pioneer Tours runs a range of varied group tours to Transnistria. Our Chernobyl and Transnistria tours are one of our most popular tours that take in a nuclear wasteland, a breakaway state, and Europe’s least visited country of Moldova. On our Ultimate Transnistria tour, we tour the country from top to bottom and visit every city on the map of Transnistria. We also run a range of fully customizable and affordable private tours for those with a political interest, photographers, or those who want a tour with more privacy and run at their own pace.