[29] As these movements exhibited increasingly nationalist sentiments and expressed intent to leave the USSR in favor of uniting with Romania, they encountered growing opposition from among the primarily Russian-speaking ethnic minorities living in the republic.

According to John Mackinlay and Peter Cross, who conducted a study based on casualty reports, significant numbers of both Transnistrians and Moldovans fought together on both sides of the conflict.

The protests developed into the formation of secessionist movements in Gagauzia and Transnistria, which initially sought autonomy within the Moldavian SSR, in order to retain Russian and Gagauz as official languages.

[30] The language laws presented a particularly volatile issue as a great proportion of the non-Moldovan population of the Moldavian SSR did not speak Moldovan (Romanian).

On 22 December 1990 president Gorbachev signed a decree that declared void the decisions of the Second Congress of People Deputies of Transnistria from 2 September.

After being prevented from clearing the roadblock, policemen opened fire, with three residents of Dubăsari being killed and 13 wounded, resulting in the first casualties of the conflict.

[32][33] In the aftermath of the failure of the Soviet coup attempt of 1991, on 27 August 1991, the Moldovan parliament adopted the Declaration of Independence of the Republic of Moldova.

In protest, the women's strike committee headed by Galina Andreeva blocked the Moscow–Chișinău railway line at a waypoint between Bender (Tighina) and Tiraspol, until the men were freed.

[35] By July 1992, total Moldovan troop strength has been estimated at 25,000–35,000, including called-up police officers, conscripts, reservists and volunteers, especially from the Moldavian localities near the conflict zone.

The volunteers came from the Russian Federation: a number of Don, Kuban, Orenburg, Sibir and local Transnistrian Black Sea Cossacks joined in to fight alongside the separatists.

In December 1991, the Moldovan authorities arrested Lieutenant-General Yakovlev in Ukrainian territory, accusing him of helping the PMR forces to arm themselves by using the weapons stocks of the 14th Army.

Moldovan forces entered Dubăsari in order to separate Transnistria into two halves, but were stopped by the city's inhabitants, who had blocked the bridge over the Dniester, at Lunga.

[41] In the course of the confrontation, three Dubăsari locals, Oleg Geletiuk, Vladimir Gotkas and Valerie Mitsuls, were killed by the Moldovan forces and sixteen people wounded.

Moldovan president Mircea Snegur, afraid of starting an armed conflict, ordered the 26 policemen to surrender to the attacking Cossacks and PMR forces.

[citation needed] In April, Russian Vice President Alexander Rutskoy visited Transnistria and expressed the full support of Transnistrian separatists by Soviet Russia.

[46] The news of the havoc in Bender reached Tiraspol, only 11 km (7 miles) away, as Moldovan troops were approaching the crucial bridge over the Dniester.

On 22 June 1992, acting on news that troops from the 14th Army were ready to cross the Dniestr and move deep into Moldova, the Moldovan military ordered an airstrike to destroy the bridge between Bender and Tiraspol.

Sources from the 14th Army claimed a second MiG-29 attack on an oil refinery at Tiraspol the following day, in which one aircraft was allegedly shot down by a S-125 Neva/Pechora missile, but this sortie was denied by Moldovan authorities.

[49] This official document whose broad lines was established by the Russian side, was signed by the presidents of Russia (Boris Yeltsin) and Moldova (Mircea Snegur).

Days after the truce had been agreed upon, a military confrontation between a local self-defence unit and the Moldovan army, took place in Gîsca (Gyska), a village with an ethnic Russian majority near Bender.

With the PMR's overwhelming military superiority, Moldova had little chance of achieving victory and the fighting was unpopular with the skeptical Moldovan population.

[50] According to a Human Rights Center "Memorial" report, local Bender eyewitnesses on 19 June 1992 saw Moldovan troops in armored vehicles deliberately firing at houses, courtyards and cars with heavy machine guns.

[33] The next day, Moldovan troops allegedly shot at civilians that were hiding in houses, trying to escape the city, or helping wounded PMR guardsmen.

Other local eyewitnesses testified that in the same day, unarmed men that gathered in the Bender downtown square in request of the PMR Executive Committee, were fired at from machine guns.

[33] HRC observers were told by doctors in Bender that as a result of heavy fire from Moldovan positions between 19 and 20 June, they were unable to attend the wounded.

The prisoners stated that while being initially detained and interrogated in Căușeni, they were severely beaten with clubs and gun buttstocks by Moldovan police, as well as being threatened with firing squads.

In 1991, PMR paramilitary forces conducted forays into supply depots of the 14th Guards Army, appropriating an unknown but large amount of equipment.

After briefly assessing the situation, he assumed command of the army, relieving Netkachev, and ordered his troops to enter the conflict directly.

On 3 July at 03:00, a massive artillery strike from 14th Army formations stationed on left bank of the Dniester obliterated the Moldovan force concentrated in Gerbovetskii forest, near Bender, effectively ending the military phase of the conflict.

Another quote attributed to him describes his stance as follows: "I told the hooligans [separatists] in Tiraspol and the fascists in Chișinău – either you stop killing each other, or else I'll shoot the whole lot of you with my tanks".