Moldova officially known as the Republic of Moldova Republica Moldova) is a nation in Eastern Europe that is landlocked. Ukraine is to its north, east, and south, as well as Romania to its west. On the country's eastern border with Ukraine, across the Dniester River, is the unincorporated state of Transnistria. Chișinău is Moldova's largest and capital.

From the 14th century until 1812, when the Ottoman Empire, to which Moldavia was a vassal state, ceded the majority of the Moldovan territory to the Russian Empire, it was known as Bessarabia. Southern Bessarabia was given back to Moldavia in 1856, and three years later, Moldavia joined Wallachia to form Romania. However, in 1878, Russian rule was restored across the entire region. Bessarabia briefly became the Moldavian Democratic Republic, an independent state within the Russian Republic, during the 1917 Russian Revolution. Following a vote by its assembly in February 1918, the Moldavian Democratic Republic declared independence and later joined Romania. The decision was contested by Soviet Russia, which in 1924 established a so-called Moldavian autonomous republic (MASSR) on partially Moldovan-inhabited territories east of Bessarabia within the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.

The Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic (Moldavian SSR), which included the majority of Bessarabia and the westernmost strip of the former MASSR (east of the Dniester), was established in 1940 when Romania was forced to cede Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina to the Soviet Union as a result of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. The Moldavian SSR declared independence on August 27, 1991, as the Soviet Union was breaking up, and it adopted the name Moldova. Romania became the first nation to recognize Moldova's independence on the same day. Moldova's constitution was approved in 1994. Since 1990, the breakaway government of Transnistria has de facto controlled the portion of Moldovan territory on the east bank of the Dniester.