Moldova is a country in Eastern Europe, with Romania on one side and Ukraine wrapping around the others. Its capital is Chișinău (often written Chisinau). It used to be part of the Soviet Union and became its own country in 1991. People there mostly speak Romanian — the land has long been tied to Romanian history — and older English often called the historic region Moldavia. That older name is not a second country sitting next door; it is mostly the old name for the same stretch of land, though the historic region was larger than today’s borders. Moldova is one of the poorer countries in Europe, known for wine, and for a difficult split: a strip along the Dniester river, Transnistria, runs itself with Russian help and is not recognised as a separate country by most of the world. A 2014 count put the population at about 3.6 million, but that figure is argued over, because many people work abroad and because of that split. The usual English word for the people is Moldovan.