1992 – War that cannot be forgotten // Vladimir Coica, hero without medals: “You couldn’t think they would kill you, we lived on courage”

Courage does not always come with a uniform, medals, or official recognition. Sometimes, it is born from the desire to defend your village, your family and the people close to you. For Vladimir Coica, the war on the Dniester began without military training and without certainty about tomorrow, but with the determination to stay alongside the community of Cosnita. Gravely wounded during the clashes, the veteran still carries the memory of those years when life depended on a single choice — to move forward “only on courage”.

Vladimir Coica is originally from the village of Cosnita. He was working as a driver at the beer factory in Dubasari. On March 2, 1992, he had come to work as usual.

“There was great commotion in the town. Everyone was running around with automatic weapons. I didn’t understand what had happened. When I got to work, two women told us to go back home. We headed home. They hid me in the trunk, so that no one would see me. The guards were looking for me to take me, but I never understood why. Probably because I was more outspoken, I had views that I didn’t hide and I shared them in public,” says Vladimir Coica, who was 35 at the time.





That day, the separatists arrested six of his colleagues. They were from Corjova and Cocieri. The men were declared missing. No one ever received any news about them again.

Together with other volunteers, Vladimir Coica prevented the organization, in December 1991, of a referendum in Cosnita by unconstitutional forces. The separatists wanted to take control of the four villages — Cosnita, Dorotcaia, Parata, and Pohrebea — which today are under the jurisdiction of Chisinau.

“On December 1, 1991, when there was a referendum for this side of the Dniester to become a separate state, some six buses with flags came to the Mayor’s Office and we, just the two of us, together with Anatolie Croitor, drove them away. They got scared and left. They wanted to hold the referendum in our village Cosnita, in Parata, Pohrebea, and Dorotcaia. After that, the tensions and intimidation started; I would go to work and they called me a ‘battle-hardened Romanian’,’’ the combatant recalls.

What actually happened on March 2, 1992? The separatists shot dead two of their own people, in order to stage a provocation, recalls Vladimir Coica.

“They needed sacrifices to trigger the fighting. A guard was shot dead in Cocieri. At the same time, the police were split and divided into two sides. It was actually the head of their militia — they killed him. Sibcenco was shot in Dubasari, in front of the police. They were looking for excuses to lay hands on the policemen. They quickly went in and arrested the policemen who were in the Commissariat. They took them to Tiraspol. The Commissariat was blocked. I remember there was an exchange of fire. The guys from the special-purpose brigade came — they came over the ice. The Dniester was frozen,” the veteran remembers.





Back home in Cosnita, Vladimir Coica took part in village patrol missions organized jointly with the police. They had no weapons; they guarded the peace of the inhabitants and made sure that households were not looted. The community was united, the volunteer recalls, although there were traitors who behaved servilely towards the guards, informing them of everything that was happening in the locality.

“Between March 8–10, they arrested two guys who were coming back from work; they were policemen in uniform. Do you know where? Where the Transnistrian customs post is still located today; it is an internal customs office, that’s where they (the guards) were stationed. They stopped the buses to see who was coming from Chișinău. We, the whole village, stood up. What does this mean? What had these people done? They were taken to the commandant’s office in Dubasari and the next day they were released. We blocked the roads, and they came with APCs to scare us. We were unarmed. I remember that from time to time a reporter would also come to us, crossing the Dniester,” he says.

Then came the night of March 13 to 14, 1992. The separatists attacked the police post in Cosnita. At that very moment, Vladimir Coica was patrolling the village streets.

“We heard gunshots, but we heard gunshots very often. The separatists would come and fire on the edge of the village to frighten us. At 6 in the morning, my brother-in-law told me that something had happened. I immediately got out of bed and went to the hospital,” the veteran recounts.









The police driver, Nicolai Sotnicenco, a father of four, was killed; two policemen were wounded and another two were taken prisoner. This tragic incident shook the entire community. People began preparing to fight back.

“We split into teams. We had no weapons. The boys were not confident, and we also sensed betrayal at the political level. The first week was very hard for us. We entered into combat, organized platoons, and chose commanders. We pushed them out of Dorotcaia and Pohrebea and drove them back along the highway. We didn’t get much help from above. Young volunteers came to fight, but we had no weapons or ammunition to give them. The tension was high and you had to defend yourself. You couldn’t think whether they would kill you or not; we lived on courage. We had all done our military service back in the day, but we were working men; we were not trained or prepared for war,” the veteran recalls.





The war left him with a deep, bleeding wound. A mine exploded. Right in front of him, a comrade-in-arms was blown to pieces.

“The explosion practically tore him in two; another one lost his leg and we carried him on our backs — Serghei Isaicu. I also stepped on a mine and lost my leg, and my arm was wounded. Back then I had a family; my son was 6 years old. My whole family witnessed this war. My wife was cooking at the factory and when I was wounded they took me right past her and she saw me. She came to the hospital and stayed with me. I was hospitalized for a month and a half; my hands were shattered and I couldn’t even eat. She fed me and took care of me,” says Vladimir Coica, who today is a first-degree invalid.





Vladimir Coica has no medals, although he was awarded the distinction “For Bravery” in 1992. At that time, the veteran was in the hospital. He had lost a leg in the war and had severely injured both hands. His comrades-in-arms went to Chisinau to collect the award for him, but it was no longer there. They were told that it had already been received. He has no medals, and he still cannot recover the compensation for the period he worked in Dubasari.

“I worked in Dubasari; there was no one to pay me for that period worked there. I lost those days toward my pension. I came home on March 2 and I hadn’t even collected my salary for February. To this day my problem has not been solved, to have that work period paid, since I remained disabled; I was supposed to present a certificate about the salary I received at work, but where was I to get that certificate from? I can’t get it from Dubasari. That’s how I was left,” the veteran confessed.





He is left with the memory of a deed he considers heroic: the defense of his locality and the thwarting of the separatist forces’ advance toward Chisinau. This thought still gives him courage and energy to keep going. Although he has gone through many trials, Vladimir Coica has preserved his faith and inner balance. The veteran does not seem burdened by resentment and emphasizes that he is a simple man, without medals, who defended his country.

“We don’t have medals, we are simple people, we defended our locality, we cut off the guards’ access to Chisinau. A little more and they would have entered Vadul lui Voda, and if they had entered there, they would have reached Chisinau. We saved Chisinau,” the veteran says.



At 70 years of age, the veteran sees one solution for peace and security: “To unite the country and join the European Union.” Vladimir Coica has many relatives and friends on the other bank of the Dniester. They often meet and talk. They are people who suffer, ready to share the same fate as the citizens on the right bank of Dniester.

“I believe we must unite the whole country and join the European Union, and not in pieces. You can’t do anything in pieces. What are we supposed to do, stay here like this? Across the Dniester I have many relatives and friends. We get along very well; they come to us, we go to them. They mostly keep quiet because they see what is happening in their villages — there is great devastation. There are entire villages abandoned there. Young people no longer stay there,” the veteran recounts.





Could the 1992 war on the Dniester have been avoided? “I don’t think so,” says, in an exclusive interview for MOLDPRES, Mihai Rotari, a former policeman of the Dubasari Commissariat. “The tensions had begun much earlier,” the veteran recalls about the saddest period of his life, lived at a beautiful age — he was only 31. “We have not even left the territory of the war,” continued Mihai Rotari, his forehead easing into a slight smile.

Ilie Ilievici was 27 when he returned home to Moldova. He had served in the Soviet army in Nizhny Tagil, Russia, and refused to stay there despite tempting offers. He specialized in strategic missiles and communications. He had just managed to get a job in Chișinău, at the Police Commissariat. On March 14, 1992, the hiring order was issued, he received his badge, and decided to go to his native village, Pohrebea.