balkans uprightness about and i wanted to do that at any cost in my budget shot if this was the time. transnistria was no isolated case. everywhere in the early one nine hundred ninety s. regional conflicts flared up and russia intervened in nearly all of them in chechnya georgia and the caucasus. there were micro states where almost the entire male population was under arms and decades and sometimes centuries old conflict flared up again. in chechnya for instance the chechens could live with being soviets but after the soviet union s demise they suddenly belong to russia and the chechens had never wanted to be russian.