100 Roubles Bendery

Transnistria declared independence from Moldova in 1990, though no United Nations member state has ever recognized it. The Transnistrian Republican Bank has issued collector coinage since the mid-1990s partly as an assertion of institutional legitimacy — a breakaway state producing silver numismatic issues is, in a narrow sense, performing statehood.

Bendery, the city honored here, was the site of the most violent fighting of the 1992 war between Transnistrian and Moldovan forces, leaving several hundred dead in a matter of days.