Ruslan Nicolaevich Otrac was born in Ribnita, Transnistria, and has been living there since then. As the economic crisis caused the factory he worked in for many years to come to a standstill, he recently decided to migrate to Canada with his wife and his two daughters. Migration is nothing new in his family: his wife was born in Georgia but was forced to escape the war in the 1990s and relocated first in Ukraine, then in Moldova.
Ruslan talks about how it feels to live in an unrecognised territory and his expectations for the life of his family as migrants overseas. He is confident that they will be able to have a happy life in Canada.
A native Russian speaker from a mixed Ukrainian-Moldovan family, when speaking about Moldovan citizens sharing a similar background he says: ‘We are all citizens of the former Soviet Union and we are treated as though we are Russians.’
