The summary of the thesis with the invoked title elucidates the situation in which Bessarabia was mentioned in the Russo-Ottoman war of 1828-1829. Bessarabia was the crossing point of the tsarist army in the Balkans and an important supply base. It is demonstrated that this war represented a heavy burden for the Bessarabians, who suffered from extraordinary benefits, contagious diseases, thus denouncing the falsity of the thesis about the progressive character of the annexation of Bessarabia to the Russian Empire.