battalions, increasingly the beneficiaries of weaponry from sympathetic Red Army officers and defections from among the local military personnel, grew better prepared than the loyalist Moldovan police in Transnistria. Police stations were captured, policemen were evicted, and in extreme cases workers' battalions and police traded fire. Skirmishes in November 1990, and September and December 1991 witnessed continued Moldovan inability to reassert sovereignty in the region. Throughout the first half of 1992 the violence continued to escalate and culminated in a short, but bloody, war in late June 1992. The war left the separatists in Tiraspol with de facto'' control over most of Transnistria and the west-bank city of Tighina (from now on known as Bender or Bendery). However, even as the Dniester Republic grew more established as a state, the end of 1991 brought with it the collapse of the state within which the OSTK activists had originally been striving to remain: the Soviet Union. Notes References External links History of creation and development of the Parliament of the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic (PMR) Former socialist republics History of Transnistria Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic 1990 establishments in the Soviet Union 1991 disestablishments in the Soviet Union States and territories established in 1990 States and territories disestablished in 1991