The largely lawless pseudo-states have faced greater scrutiny sincethe US sent military advisers in pursuit of terrorists, writes Daniel McLaughlin in Moscow.
They are the Soviet Union's orphans, bloodied, forgotten peoples surviving in political and economic limbo a decade after their mighty matriarch disappeared almost overnight.
As Moscow's empire unravelled from the Baltic to Pacific, neighbours turned guns on each other in internecine wars that killed thousands of people and displaced a million more.
Rapt by the battle for the Kremlin between Boris Yeltsin and Mikhail Gorbachev, and by the stunning speed of Soviet communism's collapse, the world barely noticed the conflagration of places like South Ossetia, Nagorno-Karabakh, Abkahzia and Transdniestr.
More than 10 years on, the guns may be almost silent for residents of these remote enclaves, but real peace is still desperately elusive.
This week, representatives of Europe's unrecognised states gather in one of the continent's poorest countries, to try and remind the world of their uncertain existence.
The host of this unusual summit is Moldova, a country sandwiched between Ukraine and Romania and known for the quality of its wine and the ruthlessness of its people smugglers.
In July the Netherlands proposed sending EU peacekeepers to support a truce between Moldova and Transdniestr, a mainly Slav-populated sliver of land that declared itself independent in 1990, fearing Moldova would reunite with its historical homeland, Romania.
Bordering Ukraine, Transdniestr has glared across the Dniestr river at the rest of Moldova since a 1992 war that killed about 1,500 people.
No nation recognises crime-ridden Transdniestr's legitimacy, though many in Moldova mutter darkly about tacit support from Moscow for its 700,000 or so Russian-speakers.
A western diplomatic push for a settlement, envisaging Moldova as a federation with autonomy for Transdniestr, has become bogged down. Transdniestr's leaders have few allies but, ironically, it will meet most of them this week in the stronghold of its adversary, Moldova's capital, Chisinau.
As bitter wars convulsed remote corners of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, separatists found support from distant sympathisers.
A few hundred Transdniestrians travelled to the Caucasus mountains to help Abkhaz guerrillas drive out Georgian troops, in a war that killed some 10,000 people and displaced hundreds of thousands.
A few hundred more fighters came to Abkhazia from another Georgian region, South Ossetia, and Abkhaz fighters returned the favour in South Ossetia's own brief but bloody struggle for independence from Tbilisi.
Russia has stopped short of acknowledging the two regions' statehood, but is accused by Tbilisi of fomenting instability.
The largely lawless pseudo-states have faced greater scrutiny since Washington sent military advisers to Georgia to help eradicate what the US says may be international terrorists lurking in the Caucasus region and infiltrating the rebel Russian region of Chechnya.
In Nagorno-Karabakh, stalemate is probably the best international mediators can hope for in the coming months.
The mainly Christian Armenian population of the enclave in Muslim Azerbaijan tried to break away from Azeri rule in 1991, triggering six years of fighting that killed about 35,000 people.
Some 800,000 more people were forced from their homes before Azeri defeat prompted a ceasefire agreement. The Armenian population has instituted self-rule in the region, while the US, France and Russia have tried to broker a resolution to the conflict.
With the ageing Azeri leader, Mr Haydar Aliyev, seriously ill in a US hospital and presidential elections looming next month, the Karabakh card is a potential vote-winner for anyone willing to risk unleashing the nationalist fervour it inspires in Azerbaijan.
For delegates at this week's conference on frozen conflicts in Moldova, the recent words of Mr Aliyev's son and heir-apparent will have had ominous resonance.
Demanding "the total liberation of the territory which Armenian forces have occupied," Mr Ilham Aliyev appeared willing to play that card last month.
"Until our territories are liberated we will not have any co-operation with Armenia," he said.