უკან

რეპორტაჟი

Patrick Bienert

ფოტოგრაფი

Patrick Bienert

Banks of Dnister

The Dnister is a river in Eastern Europe. It rises in Ukraine, flows through Moldova and Transnistria, and discharges into the Black Sea. After the 1992 Moldova-Transnistria conflict, the river became the borderline. Transnistria receives Russian financial and military support, while Moldova remains pro-European. Moldova’s independence relies on Ukraine’s resistance to Russian aggression and faces a hybrid war through disinformation, political interference, and gas control.
In Ukraine’s Odesa region, the Dnister reaches the Black Sea near the country’s largest seaport and main naval base. Since Russia’s invasion, Ukraine has tightened its blockade on Transnistria, and cutting Russian gas transit in 2025 led to an energy crisis. Many young Moldovans, struggling with unemployment and limited education, forcing them to leave the country in search of a better future abroad.

Patrick Bienert

Patrick Bienert is a German photographer who works on long-term projects of portrait, landscape and documentary photography. He studied photography at the Staatliche Lehranstalt für Fotografie in Munich. His photographic longterm projects are grounded on cultures and identity in relation to the history and its traces between the land and its inhabitants. He predominantly documents youth culture and transformation on the borders of Eastern Europe. Bienert has published the books Wake up Nights (2017), about young nightlife culture in Ukraine.East End of Europe (2020),about a pro-European generation in Georgia. Happy Springs (2023), about Ukrainian youth along the Dnipro River and by the sea, and Armenia (2024), reflecting fragments of collective memory and resilience. His work has been published in The New York Times Magazine, Double Magazine, The Atlantic, M le Monde and Zeit Magazin.