The article is dedicated to the comparative analysis of the applicability of “self-determination” legal concept to Transnistria, Abkhazia and South Ossetia. The analysis starts with a review over the history of the right for self-determination as a key principle of international law in order to substantiate its importance for all conflicts in Central and Eastern Europe. The article includes the following units of analysis: the formal legal statuses of these regions before the split of the Soviet Union; the Soviet legal acts and norms on self-determination; the legal subjectivity and identity of the Transnistrian, Abkhazian and South Ossetic population to have right for self-determination, or whether they could be a consolidated subject for self-determination, in terms of their ethnic, linguistic, confessional, racial, cultural or other peculiarities; any foreign pressure or intervention, since international law strictly prohibits any self-determination as a legitimate process under the conditions of foreign coercion. The evidence-based conclusions indicate that Transnistria has had none of the grounds listed above for selfdetermination as compared to Abkhazia and South Ossetia, which still have not had enough grounds for separation from Georgia.