1 Rouble Coat of arms of Bendery

Transnistria — the narrow strip of land between the Dniester River and the Ukrainian border — has operated as an unrecognized breakaway state since its war of secession from Moldova in 1992. No United Nations member state recognizes it. Its currency, the Transnistrian ruble, is accepted nowhere outside the territory, yet the Republican Bank has issued coins with increasing ambition, including a series honoring the heraldic arms of individual cities. Bendery, known to Ukrainians and Moldovans as Tighina, sits on the western bank of the Dniester — technically Moldovan-controlled territory — yet administered in practice by Transnistrian authorities, a jurisdictional absurdity that has never been formally resolved.