It’s almost spring in Varnita, Moldova, and Valeri is perched on his ladder pruning his apricot and cherry trees. He turns his back on a huge abandoned industrial site, on a railway line that runs along his land. Behind the imposing colossus hides Transnistria (1), a strip of land of 4000 km²: “separatist region” for the Moldavians, “Republic” for the pro-Moscow Transnistrians.
This whole story is bothering him. “I have problems all the time, the very picky customs ask me for my papers, they suspect me of trafficking”, growls the man who was born in this border plot, and his parents before him, “but it’s not a real border, just a passage to control the goods,…