Now that the war in Ukraine is on everyone’s mind, all the little liars, psychos, and warmongers who can claim “expertise” about Pridnestrovie are busy getting their opinions published in the Empire media because of our proximity to the border.

Every single day, I get an alert when one of these dirtbags mentions my home, so I thought it would be worthwhile to put out a list of the five biggest liars who milk as much money, fame, and hatred as they can by trying to instigate race riots, sexually abuse women, and call down airstrikes on innocent children.

Ion Iovcev

Born right here in Pridnestrovie, Ion Iovcev suffers from a wide range of mental disorders. Probably the weirdest thing about him, though, is that he is from a mixed family of ethnic Bulgarians, Moldovans, Russians, and Greeks, but he truly believes that he is 100% Romanian.

One day, I’ll write a full article detailing all of his many crimes and misdeeds, but the thumbnail biography of him is that he went from a bland Soviet bureaucrat in the 1980s to a full-blown jihadi, calling on Romania to annex all of Moldova (including PMR) and ethnically cleanse the place of all Russians, Jews, Ukrainians, Bulgarians, Gypsies, and anyone else who doesn’t fit the “pure Romanian” mold.

Yet when the fighting broke out between 1990-1992, he ran away to a village and hid in his friend’s basement.

For more than two decades, Iovcev ran a so-called “Romanian-language” school in Tiraspol. But in 2021, he was finally fired (by the government in Chisinau).

A Romanian politician who is a Member of the European Parliament, Eugen Tomac, Iovcev’s truly loathsome patron, somehow then found a way to get Iovcev hired as his “advisor,” paying him with EU funds.

Hilariously, Iovcev has never once gone to Belgium to speak at the European Parliament, has never written any speeches or reports submitted to the EU parliament, and, indeed, has not even left Pridnestrovie to go live in his “homeland” of Romania.

Today, Iovcev continues to live in the same village in PMR where he hid out during the war, only emerging once in a while to spew his lunatic ramblings to the fascist Romanian-language media.

Tim Tiraspol

From March 17, 2020, until April 28, 2021, the borders of PMR were closed to tourists. It was a tough time for everyone, including me, but the ONE benefit of having the border closed was that it kept the shitbag Tim Tiraspol out of here for a while.

An American, Tim fled the United States sometime in the late 1990s after his career as an actor slash stunt man in Hollywood failed. He then washed up in Eastern Europe, where he fell in with a crew of steroid-injected muscleheads who enjoyed shooting guns, getting drunk, and preying on women.

Somehow, Tim fashioned a part-time career as a “tour guide” and “fixer” here in Pridnestrovie. Ripping off overpaid journalists is one thing, but Tim has since branched out into defrauding ordinary tourists.

Sadly, just this past week, yet another one of his victims contacted me, saying he is duping folks into sending him cryptocurrency to “help Ukrainian refugees.” He’s also running a scam where he pretends to operate a “hostel” that doesn’t exist.

Since the tourist trade (and flow of moronic journalists) is still down as a result of the Covid bullshit, he’s been earning pennies selling “war stories” to
Empire media outlets:

Over the border, the war is close enough for Tim Tiraspol to hear. Every day it begins “at 5am like clockwork” with bombs and Ukrainian anti-aircraft guns.

I literally wake up at 5 am every day to feed our pets and get my wife ready for work. There certainly aren’t any “bombs” to hear because none are exploding, nor is there any anti-aircraft fire closer than about 700km away.  But maybe he’s got better hearing than my dog does.

Tim is a bullshit artist, through and through. Even his previous dedication to his physique is gone. These days, it’s pretty easy to find him drunk on vodka at 11 am in one of the downtown cafes, and all of the expats here avoid him like the plague.

Thomas de Waal

Despite the Dutch name, Thomas de Waal is actually a British man who has gained a reputation as an academic expert on Eastern Europe and the Caucasus region (Georgia, Azerbaijan, etc).

Occasionally, he writes opinionated editorial columns and non-fiction books about these countries, but mostly, he gets his “expert” reputation on Pridnestrovie because he is a senior fellow of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, an Orwellian name if there ever was one.

His focus isn’t usually on Pridnestrovie, but since he’s the most visible “academic” expert on this country, he’ll pop up from time to time in Empire media.

He’s actually been here to visit a couple of times, however, he speaks only pidgin Russian, no Ukrainian, and no Moldovan, so his “expertise” is rather superficial. He does love, however, talking about PMR’s famous plastic coins.

Unlike the other folks on this list, I’d say most of his “mistruths” about PMR stem from uppercrust British arrogance rather than malice.

Keith Harrington

Keith is probably best described as a wannabe Thomas de Waal. A few decades younger than Thomas, Keith hails from Ireland, and became fascinated with PMR during his graduate years.

In 2018, he traveled to Tiraspol to report on the one-year anniversary of an important protest. I made the naive decision of reaching out to him on Facebook to try and correct a couple of points of fact, but he responded in a hostile manner, so I gave up.

Currently, he is funded by money from the Royal University of Ireland as a “traveling scholar,” which amounts to “€26,500 per annum to include a stipend of €18,500 and a contribution towards fees of up to €8,000, where appropriate.” In other words, up to 55 thousand pounds a year. Not bad!

Unfortunately, whereas Thomas de Waal is a skilled writer, Keith can barely string a coherent sentence together. And his fascination slash obsession with Pridnestrovie has continued, even though he hasn’t been here in a while.

Here’s a snippet from Keith’s latest masterpiece:

The death toll rose, as separatist forces made a concerted effort to expel those loyal to Chisinau from Transnistria.

If you can explain what that comma is doing there, I’ll pay you a hundred bucks LOL

Keith has a strange grasp on even trivial facts, such as this:

In 1991, these militias were merged to form a unified fighting force known as the Dniester Guard. Around the same time, hundreds of Cossacks arrived in the region, often with the assistance of the Russian Air Force.

So… hundreds of Cossacks took a Russian Air Force plane to get to PMR? A country with no airport? Where did they land? And where did these Air Force planes refuel?  Where did the flights depart from? Why did they fly in some of the Cossacks as opposed to taking the bus or train? Sigh…

The whole article is nonsense and lazily constructed, as is his ham-fisted attempt to turn the events of 32 friggin’ years ago into something relevant today:

Since 1992, Transnistria has been de facto independent, but Moldova has retained control over a considerable portion of the Dubasari District. Thirty years later, some now fear that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine may reignite tensions in the Dubasari District.

Unfortunately for Keith, all the boundary disputes have long since been settled. And good luck finding anyone truly “worried” about Dubasari reigniting because they only exist in Keith’s head.

Ben Hodges

Considering that Ben Hodges is the one person on this list who has never been to Pridnestrovie, it’s more than a little surprising just how obsessed he is with this country.

As far as I can tell, this little bastard has stared too long at his imaginary maps and convinced himself that there is a colossal yet secret Russian base here in PMR that is “poised and ready” to launch an invasion of someone, somewhere, at any moment.

The reality is less exciting, of course. There are something like 1,000 active-duty Russian troops here, at the most, and they have no tanks, no helicopters, no missiles, and no gunboats. A more ill-equipped invasion force, you’ll never find.

Furthermore, the government in PMR is overwhelmingly against attacking or invading anyone, and always has been. Not one person in ten thousand here would support launching an invasion or armed aggression against Ukraine or Moldova.

Not to mention the inconvenient fact that Russia’s official position with regards to Moldova (that PMR belongs to Moldova, and any autonomy or independence for PMR should be negotiated) would make any hostile use of Russian troops based here an act that would severely damage the existing good relations between Moldova and Russia.

Nonetheless, Ben just can’t help moving his little pieces around the board and planning wars for other people to die in. He’s probably egging on NATO to start World War 3 and launch nuclear missiles at Moscow as we speak.

Thankfully, most Empire media in the English language generally ignores Ben Hodges. Unfortunately, plenty of fascists in Romania think quite highly of him, and they have used his warmongering ramblings to further their cause (the annexation of Moldova).

AND NOW YOU KNOW THE TOP 5 STUPIDEST EXPERTS ON PRIDNESTROVIE!