5 Roubles Alexander Lebed

Transnistria's commemorative program has long issued coins honoring figures central to the unrecognized republic's founding mythology, and Alexander Lebed fits squarely into that tradition. As the commander of the Russian 14th Army during the 1992 war between Transnistria and Moldova, Lebed negotiated the ceasefire that effectively froze the conflict and secured Transnistrian de facto independence — a status the territory still holds. Without his intervention, the political entity issuing this coin likely would not exist.

Lebed died in a helicopter crash in Siberia in 2002, twelve years before this issue.