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SITUATED BETWEEN UKRAINE and Moldova, Transnistria is not officially recognised as a country.

They have armed men, uniformed police who demand bribes, and a Parliament, but all their exports go through Moldovan authority.

While the Soviet Union forgot about Transnistria, Transnistria certainly hasn’t forgotten about the Soviet Union judging by the strange monuments.

The images below are by photographer Darmon Richter, who writes that the country “could be described as the breakaway state of a breakaway state”.

This small strip of land east of the River Dniester, sandwiched between Moldova and Ukraine, remained pro-Russia even after the 1991 fall of the USSR. Tensions between Moldova and its breakaway state erupted into conflict, but the problem was, Transnistria had served as a major labour pool for Soviet industry – and Leninesque President Igor Smirnov was sitting on one of the largest stockpiles of weaponry in Eastern Europe. The conflict reached an uneasy ceasefire in 1992, which has remained in place since.

You can read the full story on Richter’s blog.