100 Roubles Fortress of Kamenetsk

Transnistria — officially unrecognized by any United Nations member state — has operated its own central bank and issued collector coinage since the early 1990s, following its violent secession from Moldova in 1992. The Transnistrian Republican Bank has used numismatic issues partly as soft-power instruments, asserting institutional legitimacy through the grammar of sovereign coinage.

Kamenets-Podolsky fortress, the subject of this piece, actually sits across the border in Ukraine — a detail worth noting for catalogers uncertain about the geographic claim being made.