Russia's been thinking of a third front since they had a first front (Crimea) and a second front (Donetsk).
From France24, April 21:
The safety of Russian citizens in Moldova's breakaway Transnistria region is currently under threat, Sergei Shoigu, secretary of Russia's Security Council, said on Tuesday. Speaking on FRANCE 24, Laurențiu Pleșca, Policy Fellow at the German Marshall Fund, explains that Russia is using the same playbook it used in eastern Ukraine and Donbas adding that "it's remarkable that Shoigu is not even trying to hide it".
....MORE (video)
Backing up a few days, Kyiv Post, April 18:
Budanov Says Russia Boosting Military Readiness in Transnistria Amid Strategic Fears
The Head of Ukraine’s Presidential Office warns that Moscow is reinforcing its limited contingent in the breakaway region to counter perceived threats from Kyiv.
From December 2025's Odesa At Risk: "Russian stuff blowing up: Russia looks to play its Transnistria card":
As noted in 2024:
The typical sequence of events is for a country to claim their enemy is persecuting a minority within a territory, usually co-coreligionists or language-based, to set up a casus belli. Then skirmishes followed by warnings and finally full-scale hostilities....
NATO would love to have Russia extend itself further as proposed in the 2019 RAND Corporation report on how to bleed Russia dry militarily and perhaps more importantly, economically. From our February 6, 2022 post:
"The RAND Corporation Blueprint For Forcing Putin To Over-Extend Himself"
I hope that the U.S. or NATO or whoever commissioned this study didn't pay a lot for it, it's basically the strategy that Pope John Paul II, Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan came up with in the early 1980's although the details do differ. The tactical components of the RAND plan are:
1. Arming Ukraine ;
2. Increase support for jihadists in Syria;
3. Promoting regime change in Belarus;
4. Exploiting tensions in the South Caucasus;
5. Reducing Russian influence in Central Asia;
6. Rivaling the Russian presence in Transnistria.....MUCH MORE
Here's that bit of land via BigThink's Strange Maps:
And here is the relevant section of RAND's Extending Russia: Competing from Advantageous Ground, page 130 of the report (pp. 158 of the PDF)
A look at this map, by NPR's @mulletmapping, shows you this region would be relevant to the war in Ukraine:
— Tim Mak (@timkmak) April 26, 2022
-Not far from the Black Sea port of Odesa.
-Shares a 250 mile border with Ukraine
-Fighting could also imperil the north-south route from Kyiv to Odesa. pic.twitter.com/62AzdFlvqp
....MUCH MORE
In February 2016 we posted a series of five headshots of defense ministers that had made the rounds on the internet the previous year, see if you can guess which one is Russian:
