This article is omitting a lot of facts, like the multiple times Russia tried to implement coups in Moldova to bring Russian-aligned people to power.
These folks aren't just Russian speaking, they are ethnic Russians that have been living there for hundreds of years.
As Moldova vacillated between Russia and Romania, these people are caught in the middle.
If it did, only logical reaction would be to deport all Russians from everywhere abroad.
Putin's paranoia is that other states reason like him and understand him as well as he thinks he understands them. Putin would engage in genocide in their position hence Ukraine was a Nazi state.
And it had zero to do with Russian speaking Ukrainians or Russian minority too.
I tend to think that he fell for his own propaganda orders as they came back given his very visible symptoms of long term steroid use and dementia. But it doesn't really matter what he fools himself with and what he knows is a lie.
Putin and Russia recycle same excuses and points across countries all the time. It does not make it harder for them, they work around the same each time.
I don't think there is much evidence of dementia or whatever. The rumors about Putin bad health are there constantly for years and none of them ended up confirmed.
Well most of the world doesn't have the horrific Russian state mindset. To us civilized ones, disrupting the generally reasonable status quo to blow people up into submission is very wrong.
However, in the grand scheme, this would not be an efficient use of resources.
"An upgrade to the virtually unarmed Moldovan military, which received its first Piranha armored vehicles from Germany a few weeks ago, is also on the table.
"At present, the country could hardly defend itself even against the separatists in Transnistria, who probably have dozens of battle tanks and other heavy military equipment, along with the large stocks of ammunition. Ukraine has therefore offered to provide military assistance if Moscow and the separatists provoke a conflict. But any suggestion that Ukraine is planning a military intervention in Moldova is absurd and at best a pretext for the Kremlin to justify its belligerence. Ukraine can certainly do without committing its military resources to a second front."
Putin styles himself as the "Defender of Ethnic Russians". Whether that is an excuse or a serious reason is probably a political question.
Given that, and the NATO encroachment, I'd think there would be an excellent reason for Putin to want Transnistria - pushing the borders back that far gives him buffer zones that includes Mountain ranges and help shore up his defenses if he captures all of Ukraine. Because Transnistria is mountainous, it provides a barrier for invading forces, and a number of attractive choke points.