The war in Transnistria
Moldova battles Russian-backed separatists; Egypt bread riots; Eyjafjallajökull erupts
The History Hour · BBC World Service
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Show Notes
With speculation mounting that President Putin might mount an attack on Moldova, Max Pearson hears a first-hand account of the war in the 1990s between the Moldovans and Russian-backed separatists in the disputed region of Transnistria. There's also a chilling story from the Cold War about how a Soviet air defence official prevented a potential catastrophe by realising that a computer warning about a US nuclear attack was a false alarm.
In the second-half of the History Hour, an Egyptian poet remembers how 48 hours of unrest in 1977 forced the government to scrap a huge increase in the cost of bread, and an Icelandic geophysicist recalls how the 2010 eruption of the Eyjafjallajökull volcano caused disruption all over Europe.
PHOTO: Russian-speaking Transnistrian fighters during the war (Getty Images)