On 19 June, the Republic of Moldova marked 34 years since the tragic events of June 1992 — the battles on the Varnița–Tighina plateau, one of the hardest pages of the War of the Dniester. The deputy prime minister for reintegration, Valeriu Chiveri, laid flowers at the monuments near Tighina, alongside veterans. The commemoration was national, held far from Ungheni. And yet it can be read directly on the district’s map.
Because if you open the official state list of the fallen, you find that the Ungheni district lost that year not four men, as the town usually remembers, but at least nine.
The nine of the “Book of Memory”
The “Book of Memory” — the nominal list of those who fell in 1991–1992, kept by the Agency for Science and Military Memory of the Ministry of Defence — is the official document that gathers them all. Triunghi.md went through it and extracted the names of those born in the Ungheni district. There are nine men, many from villages the town’s account usually leaves out of the story:
- Pavel Buruiană, from Condrătești — fell at Cocieri, on 19 July 1992
- Vladimir Cimpoieș, from Buciumeni — fell at Coșnița, on 29 May 1992
- Ilie Mihalachi, from Florițoaia Veche — fell at Tighina, on 17 June 1992
- Vasile Moruz, from Chirileni — fell at Cocieri, on 8 August 1992
- Anatolie Popovici, from Boghenii Vechi — fell at Tighina, on 20 June 1992
- Petru Slonov, from the town of Ungheni — fell at Tighina, on 31 July 1992
- Alexandru Ticot, from Pârlița — fell at Tighina, on 20 June 1992
- Oleg Ungureanu, from the town of Ungheni — fell at Tighina, on 20 June 1992
- Vladimir Zarnițchi, from Zăzulenii Vechi — fell at Coșnița, on 2 December 1992
Four of them died in June, at Tighina — three on 20 June 1992 itself — that is, in the very days now commemorated. The others fell over the summer and until December, at Cocieri and Coșnița, on the other bank of the Dniester. They were young men: the oldest, Vasile Moruz from Chirileni, was 31; most were under 25.
Four on the monument, nine in the document
In the centre of town, in the square, stands the Wayside Shrine of the Nation’s Martyrs, raised in 1994 in memory of the locals who fell in the Transnistria conflict. It has a story of its own: modelled on a wayside shrine from the Second World War, the 1994 replica was dedicated to those of 1992. The original is kept at the Ungheni History and Ethnography Museum.
Around this monument, over time, the figure of “four people from Ungheni” took hold — those the town tied most closely to it: Oleg Ungureanu, Petru Slonov, Vasile Moruz and the volunteer Ghenadie Crestiuc. Two of them also have streets in town — Ghenadie Crestiuc Street and Oleg Ungureanu Street, named by a town council decision in 2005.
Here an honest clarification is needed. Crestiuc is claimed by Ungheni — he worked at the town’s cannery and has a street here — but in the “Book of Memory” he is recorded as born in Tocuz, in the Căușeni district. So he is not among the nine born in the Ungheni district; he is a fifth name, tied to the town by life rather than by records. The difference between “four” and “nine” is no one’s error: the monument kept the names closest to the town, while the state document counts by village of birth — and so Condrătești, Florițoaia Veche, Boghenii Vechi, Pârlița, Buciumeni and Zăzulenii come to light.
How the district remembers
Ungheni commemorates its heroes year after year, on 2 March, the Day of Memory and Gratitude: a memorial service and flowers at the shrine, with veterans, authorities and priests, in the presence of mayor Vitalie Vrabie. Memory is also kept through school — the Buciumeni gymnasium bears the name of Vladimir Cimpoieș, the hero who fell at Coșnița, and ceremonies are held year after year at his memorial plaque, with the participation of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
Two of the fallen were decorated posthumously with the Order “Ștefan cel Mare” — Oleg Ungureanu, a police corporal, by presidential decree as early as August 1992, and Petru Slonov.
But the veterans who returned ask for more than flowers once a year. Sergiu Tătaru, a man from Ungheni who in 1992 came back from abroad to enlist as a volunteer and who today is deputy head of a veterans’ association, summed up the experience of that year in a single phrase — “I saw death with my own eyes” — and warned that commemorative marches do not, for combatants, mean real help.
At least nine
How many people from Ungheni actually went to the front in 1992 — volunteers, police officers, reservists mobilized at the town’s commissariat — remains a figure that Triunghi.md did not find officially published; if it exists in a centralized form, it is held by the Ungheni Territorial Military Centre. Likewise, a public figure for how many veterans of this war still live in the district does not appear in the sources consulted.
What can be said with certainty, from the document, is only this: in 1992, the Ungheni district sent its sons to the Dniester, and at least nine did not return. Their names are written in a state book — even if only a few fit on the town’s monument.
The list of the fallen comes from the “Book of Memory”, the official register of the Agency for Science and Military Memory (Ministry of Defence); Triunghi.md extracted the names of those born in the Ungheni district. The history of the Wayside Shrine of the Nation’s Martyrs comes from the tourist guide of the Ungheni District Council; the biographies and decorations, from the “Credință Patriei” portal of the Ministry of Internal Affairs; the veteran’s testimony, from a public report cited as such. The number of participants and of living veterans in the district was not public at the time of writing.