Russia-Ukraine War, Zelensky and Blinken News: Live Updates

The war jitters are also adding another chapter to Moldova’s long and increasingly desperate effort to untangle itself from Moscow’s clutches. In pursuit of that, it recently applied to join the European Union, but the prospect of gaining admission anytime soon is remote.

“We are a fragile country in a fragile region,” said Maia Sandu, Moldova’s president, in an interview.

Moldovans’ fears swelled anew on Friday, when a Russian general said his country’s military now plans to seize the entire southern coast of Ukraine. That would establish a land bridge from Russia in the east to Transnistria, a heavily armed, breakaway region in Moldova’s east — bordering Ukraine — that is controlled by Russia.

Whether Russia has the wherewithal to swallow up such a large stretch of Ukrainian territory is debatable, especially in view of the enormous losses its military suffered in the battle for Kyiv. But whether real or just an effort to stir up trouble in the region, the Moldovans are taking the general’s threat seriously.

The Moldovan government has long been nervous about Transnistria, a thin sliver of territory that is controlled by at least 12,000 separatists and Russian troops. Since the war erupted, the Moldovan and Ukrainian militaries have faced the extra concern of whether the Transnistrians were going to jump into the battle and start attacking Ukraine from the west. So far, that has not happened.

Tucked between Romania and Ukraine, Moldova is tiny — with less than three million people — and for centuries has been torn between greater powers: first the Ottomans and Russia, and now Europe and Russia. The theme, clearly, is Russia, and Russia does not want to let it go.

Moscow exerts a stranglehold over nearly 100 percent of Moldova’s energy supply. And the Kremlin is constantly trying to stir up Moldova’s many Russian speakers who are susceptible to its propaganda, especially in Transnistria.

That is what seemed to have happened on Friday, when, according to the Russian news media, Maj. Gen. Rustam Minnekayev said, “Russian control over the south of Ukraine is another way out to Transnistria, where there are cases of Russian-speaking people being oppressed.”

The Moldovan government immediately summoned the Russian ambassador to complain about the general’s statement, saying it was “not only unacceptable but also unfounded” and led to “increased tension.”

For Ms. Sandu, 49, the country’s first female president, it was another hurdle along a dangerous pathway she has been trying to navigate since the crisis began.

Moldova has condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and barred Moldovans from sticking pro-Russia symbols on their cars. At the same time, the country did not fully join the European Union’s sanctions on Russia, for fear of being cut off from Russian gas.

“No one said it was going to be easy,” Ms. Sandu, 49, said from her office on Stefan cel Mare, the grand boulevard in the capital, Chisinau, that cuts past a patchwork of hulking, Soviet-style office buildings. “But no one said it was going to be this hard.”

The war has been hard not only on her but on most everyone here. Before the hostilities started, Adrian Trofim, whose family owns a 19th-century countryside winery and resort, thought that he was finally catching a break after two years of struggling during the coronavirus pandemic. He was adding a wing to the hotel, setting up a spa focused on wine-based treatments and gearing up to produce a sparkling wine.

But now his operations have fallen into peril. Brandy worth a quarter of a million dollars that he needs to ship to Belarus has been blocked in his warehouses. His regular Ukrainian customers have no way of paying him, costing him several more hundreds of thousands of dollars. And he cannot ship his chardonnays to China, one of his new markets, because the port in Odesa, Ukraine, that he uses for exports shut down as soon as the first bombs fell in February.