Moldova, officially the Republic of Moldova, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe, on the northeastern corner of the Balkans. The country spans a total of 33,483 km2 (12,928 sq mi) and has a population of approximately 2.5 million as of January 2023. Moldova is bordered by Romania to the west and Ukraine to the north, east, and south. The unrecognised breakaway state of Transnistria lies across the Dniester river on the country's eastern border with Ukraine. Moldova is a unitary parliamentary representative democratic republic with its capital in Chișinău, the country's largest city and main cultural and commercial centre.
Romanian is the official and main language of Romania and Moldova. Romanian is part of the Eastern Romance sub-branch of Romance languages, a linguistic group that evolved from several dialects of Vulgar Latin which separated from the Western Romance languages in the course of the period from the 5th to the 8th centuries. To distinguish it within the Eastern Romance languages, in comparative linguistics it is called Daco-Romanian as opposed to its closest relatives, Aromanian, Megleno-Romanian, and Istro-Romanian. It is also spoken as a minority language by stable communities in the countries surrounding Romania, and by the large Romanian diaspora. In total, it is spoken by 25 million people as a first language.
The Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) is a regional intergovernmental organization in Eurasia. It was formed following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. It covers an area of 20,368,759 km2 (7,864,422 sq mi) and has an estimated population of 239,796,010. The CIS encourages cooperation in economic, political, and military affairs and has certain powers relating to the coordination of trade, finance, lawmaking, and security, including cross-border crime prevention.
Chișinău, formerly known as Kishinev, is the capital and largest city of Moldova. The city is Moldova's main industrial and commercial centre, and is located in the middle of the country, on the river Bîc, a tributary of the Dniester. According to the results of the 2014 census, the city proper had a population of 532,513, while the population of the Municipality of Chișinău was 700,000. Chișinău is the most economically prosperous locality in Moldova and its largest transportation hub. Nearly a third of Moldova's population lives in the metro area.
Moldovan or Moldavian is one of the two local names for the Romanian language in Moldova. Moldovan was declared the official language of Moldova in Article 13 of the constitution adopted in 1994, while the 1991 Declaration of Independence of Moldova used the name Romanian. In 2003, the Moldovan parliament adopted a law defining Moldovan and Romanian as glottonyms for the same language. In 2013, the Constitutional Court of Moldova interpreted that Article 13 of the constitution is superseded by the Declaration of Independence, thus giving official status to the name Romanian. The breakaway region of Transnistria continues to recognize "Moldovan" as one of its official languages, alongside Russian and Ukrainian. Ukraine also continues to make a distinction between Moldovan and Romanian, with one village declaring its language to be Romanian and another declaring it to be Moldovan, though Ukrainian officials have announced an intention to remove the legal status of Moldovan. On 16 March 2023, the Moldovan Parliament approved a law on referring to the national language as Romanian in all legislative texts and the constitution. On 22 March, the president of Moldova, Maia Sandu, promulgated the law.
Transnistria, or Pridnestrovie, officially known as the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic (PMR), is a breakaway state internationally recognized as part of Moldova. Transnistria controls most of the narrow strip of land between the Dniester river and the Moldova–Ukraine border, as well as some land on the other side of the river's bank. Its capital and largest city is Tiraspol. Transnistria is officially designated by the Republic of Moldova as the Administrative-Territorial Units of the Left Bank of the Dniester or as Stînga Nistrului.
Gagauzia or Gagauz-Yeri, officially the Autonomous Territorial Unit of Gagauzia (ATUG), is an autonomous territorial unit of Moldova. Its autonomy is intended for the local Gagauz people, a Turkic-speaking, primarily Orthodox ethnic group.
Moldova is divided administratively into two levels:
The Moldova national football team represents Moldova in men's international football and is administered by the Moldovan Football Federation, the governing body for football in Moldova. Moldova's home ground is Zimbru Stadium in Chișinău and their head coach is Serghei Cleșcenco. Shortly before the break-up of the Soviet Union, they played their first match against Georgia on 2 July 1991.
The president of the Republic of Moldova is the head of state of Moldova. The current president is Maia Sandu, who assumed office on 24 December 2020.
The Transnistrian War was an armed conflict that broke out on 2 November 1990 in Dubăsari between pro-Transnistria forces, including the Transnistrian Republican Guard, militia and neo-Cossack units, which were supported by elements of the Russian 14th Army, and pro-Moldovan forces, including Moldovan troops and police.
Moldovans, sometimes referred to as Moldavians, are a Romanian-speaking ethnic group and the largest ethnic group of the Republic of Moldova and a significant minority in Romania, Italy, Ukraine and Russia. There is an ongoing controversy, in part involving the linguistic definition of ethnicity, over whether Moldovans' self-identification constitutes an ethnic group distinct and separate from Romanians, or a subset. The extent of self-identification as Romanians in the Republic of Moldova varies.
The unification of Moldova and Romania or simply called as the Romanian reunification is a popular concept and hypothetical unification in the two countries that began during the Revolutions of 1989. The Romanian Revolution in 1989 and the independence of Moldova in 1991 further contributed to the development of a movement for the unification of the two Romanian-speaking countries. The question of reunification is recurrent in the public sphere of the two countries, often as a speculation, both as a goal and a danger. Though historically Romanian support for unification was high, a March 2022 survey following the Russian invasion of Ukraine indicated that only 11% of Romania's population supports an immediate union, while over 42% think it is not the right moment.
Fotbal Club Zimbru Chișinău, commonly known as Zimbru Chișinău or simply Zimbru, is a Moldovan professional football club based in Chișinău, which competes in the Super Liga, the highest tier of Moldovan football.
Fotbal Club Bălți, commonly known as Bălți, is a Moldovan professional football club based in Bălți, founded in 1984 as FC Zaria Bălți and refounded in 2020 as FC Bălți. They play in the Super Liga, the top division of Moldovan football. Between 1992 and 2014, the team was known as FC Olimpia Bălți.
Maia Sandu is a Moldovan politician who has been the President of Moldova since 24 December 2020. She is the founder and former leader of the Party of Action and Solidarity (PAS) and former Prime Minister of Moldova from 8 June 2019 until 14 November 2019, when the government collapsed after a vote of no-confidence. Sandu was Minister of Education from 2012 to 2015 and member of the Parliament of Moldova from 2014 to 2015, and again in 2019.
The accession of Moldova to the European Union (EU) is on the current agenda for future enlargement of the EU.
The COVID-19 pandemic in Moldova was a part of the worldwide pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2. The virus was confirmed to have reached the Republic of Moldova on 7 March 2020, when a Moldovan woman who returned from Italy tested positive for the novel coronavirus. As the number of infected people started to rise during the next days, the Parliament declared a state of emergency on 17 March 2020 for the entire territory of the Republic of Moldova for a period of 60 days.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Romania has supported Moldova on several occasions, supplying it with medical equipment and supplies, volunteer Romanian experts and doctors and even a series of COVID-19 vaccine units that arrived on 27 February 2021, which allowed Moldova to start its vaccination program.
COVID-19 vaccination in Moldova started on 2 March 2021. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Moldova was very reliant on external help from other countries, having received donations of vaccines from Romania, the United Arab Emirates, Russia and China. In fact, Moldova's vaccination campaign started due to a donation from Romania on 27 February 2021 composed of 21,600 Oxford–AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine doses, with the first vaccinated person in the country being Alexandru Botizatu. Romania had promised earlier, on 29 December 2020, that it would help Moldova with a collaboration project which would include 200,000 vaccine doses to help Moldova combat the pandemic, but also other matters of the country. Romania subsequently made more donations on 27 March 2021 with 50,400 vaccine units; on 17 April 2021 with 132,000 vaccine doses, fulfilling its promise to Moldova; and on 7 May 2021 with 100,800 vaccine units even though this surpassed the promised 200,000 vaccine doses.
