Bessarabia is a
historical region in
Eastern Europe, bounded by the
Dniester river on the east and the
Prut river on the west. About two thirds of Bessarabia lies within modern-day
Moldova, with the
Budjak region covering the southern coastal region and part of the Ukrainian
Chernivtsi Oblast covering a small area in the north.
In 1940, after securing the assent of Nazi Germany through the
Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, the Soviet Union pressured Romania, under threat of war, into withdrawing from Bessarabia, allowing the
Red Army to enter and the Soviet Union to
annex the region. The area was formally integrated into the Soviet Union: the core joined parts of the
Moldavian ASSR to form the
Moldavian SSR, while territories in the north and the south of Bessarabia were transferred to the
Ukrainian SSR.
Axis-aligned Romania recaptured the region in 1941 with the success of
Operation München during the
Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, but lost it in 1944 as the tide of war turned. In 1947, the Soviet-Romanian border along the Prut was internationally recognised by the Paris Treaty that ended
WW2.
During the process of the
dissolution of the Soviet Union, the Moldavian and Ukrainian SSRs proclaimed their independence in
1991, becoming the modern states of Moldova and
Ukraine while preserving the existing partition of Bessarabia. Following a short war in the early 1990s, the
Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic was proclaimed in the
Transnistria, extending its authority also over the municipality of
Bender on the right bank of Dniester river. Part of the
Gagauz-inhabited areas in southern Bessarabia was organised in 1994 as an
autonomous region within Moldova.
