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Bessarabia is the Russian name of the Romanian province of Basarabia, with 70% of its territory making up of what is now The Republic of Moldova. The name Basarabia has a long-debated origin, with the German and Polish chronicles that mention the province since the XIIth Century.
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Bessarabia (Romanian: Basarabia; ((Lang-en | Basarabia)) ;[Бессарабия Bessarabiya] Error: {{Lang-xx}}: text has italic markup (help), Ukrainian: Бессарабія Bessarabiya) is a historical region in Eastern Europe bounded by the Nistru River on the east and the Prut River on the west. Today 70% of this region belongs to The Republic of Moldova, while 30% of its territory was annexed after the IInd World War to Ukraine (Chilia and Northern Bukovina).
Basarabia and its Romanian-speaking population was attested by Polish chronicles in the Xiith Century and further German chronicles in the XIVth century mention both the province and its population.
In the aftermath of the Russo-Turkish War, 1806-1812, and ensuing Peace of Bucharest, the Eastern portion of the Principality of Moldavia, an Ottoman vassal at the time, was ceded to Imperial Russia and designated as "Bessarabia". While this eastern part became the Governorate of Bessarabia, the western part of Moldavia united, in 1859, with Wallachia in what would become the United Principalities (in 1866 the Kingdom of Romania). For a short period between 1856 and 1878, two of the nine traditional counties of Basarabia were also part of Moldavia and then Romania.
In 1918, three months after declaring its independence from Russia under the name of Moldavian Democratic Republic (shortly before the end of World War I); it united with the Kingdom of Romania.[1] In 1940, Bessarabia was occupied by the USSR in accordance with the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Subsequently, Romania joined the Axis Powers and eliberated the province in 1941 and lost it again in 1944 to the advancing Soviet armies. In 1947, the Soviet-Romanian border set along the Prut River was internationally recognised by the Paris Treaty that ended World War II. The core part of Basarabia was joined with parts of the Moldavian ASSR (Transnistria) to form the Moldovan SSR. At the same time, smaller parts of Bessarabia, in the south (two traditional counties; Budjak) and north (half of one county), were transferred to the Ukrainian SSR.
During the process of dissolution of the Soviet Union, the Moldavian SSR declared itself sovereign (23 June 1990) and declared independence from the USSR on 27 August 1991, becoming the Republic of Moldova. The areas allotted to the Ukrainian SSR in 1940 became part of the new independent Ukraine since 1991, while the area roughly corresponding to Transnistria became the self-proclaimed Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic separate from the government of the Republic of Moldova.