Demolished hotel ‘National’ in the center of Chisinau in the colors of the Ukrainian flag. Photo: Meta.mk, used with permission. This article by Boјan Blaževski was originally published by Meta.mk. An edited version is republished here under a content-sharing agreement between Global Voices and Metamorphosis Foundation. One can feel high tension in the air in the capital, Chișinău. Protests, disinformation campaigns, and economically unsubstantiated restrictive measures are just some of the tactics that official Moscow is carrying out in the case of Moldova. An old dilapidated building greets passengers arriving at the airport in Chișinău. In terms of its size and interior, it overwhelmingly reminds me of the old building of the Skopje Airport. Immediately after the entrance of the small edifice comes an unusual passport control. Two border police officers are standing at the checkpoint, supervised by a third person in civilian clothes. Next to the counter, there are two tactical-unit-policemen armed to the teeth. Moldova declared a state of emergency immediately after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the echoes of this war can be felt immediately after arriving at the border of this small Eastern European country. Around 20 passengers are in front of me, and the border police at this counter, which is one of the few, separates seven for additional checks and escorts them to the special rooms. The magical sentence – that I am a journalist – seemingly changes the expression of the border police officer, who immediately notices the trace of my visit to Ukraine in my passport – the stamp from the Kyiv airport Boryspil. After kindly asking about the purpose of my stay in Moldova and where I would be accommodated, I got the stamp on my passport that allowed me to enter the country. Mihail waits for me at the exit of the Customs Control at the airport. He is my driver to the hotel. He apologizes that he could not leave his car in front of the airport, since parking there is strictly forbidden, and also there are a large number of taxis. He also explains that the steel parking garage at the airport is full of vehicles with Ukrainian registration plates, so he could not park his car there either. Since the start of the Russian aggression, Ukraine has been left without air traffic to the world, and the closest flying point for many Ukrainian citizens is Chișinău. The seaside city of Odesa, with more than a million inhabitants, is less than 200 kilometers (124 miles) from here. “There are one million Ukrainian citizens in Chișinău now. They fled from the war there and now are starting to buy flats in the city,” explains Mihail. The number of Ukrainian refugees keeps growing, explains Mihail, portraying the severity of the situation Moldova is in. UNHCR data, however, show that Moldova, up to October 15, 2023, received 111,338 officially registered refugees from Ukraine, out of 964,796 persons who had crossed the border from Ukraine after the start of all out Russian aggression on February 22, 2022. About 120,000 of the refugees who crossed the border are not Ukrainian citizens, but citizens of other countries, primarily Russian citizens fleeing from conscription into the Russian Army. Most of these refugees did not remain in Moldova. NGO sources from inside the country estimate that about 100,000 refugees actually reside in Moldova now. These numbers, if correct, are dramatic for a country that, at the last census by the Statistical Office of Moldova, in 2014, had fewer than 3 million registered inhabitants. This enormous increase in the population after the Russian invasion of Ukraine is visible all over Chișinău. But, Mihail’s optimism does not subside. He explains that Chișinău is an extraordinarily safe city, there is peace in Moldova, and only the sirens of the ambulances disturb the peaceful atmosphere of the city. Against the calming elucidations of Mihail, tension can be felt in the air in Chișinău. In November 1990, a war broke out in this former USSR republic between the Moldovan Government and the Transnistrian separatist forces supported by official Moscow. The truce was reached on July 21, 1992, leading to the establishment of a somewhat occupied territory in Moldova through the creation of the internationally not-recognized republic Transnistria (“Pridnestrovie” in Russian). Monuments from the Soviet period, inscribed in Moldovan and Russian languages, can be seen in the center of Chișinău even today. Photo: Meta.mk, used with permission. Today, Transnistria is a self-proclaimed republic, supported by Russian soldiers and military equipment. Moldovan authorities in Chișinău de facto do not control a tenth of its internationally recognized territory.