Later that afternoon, I went to the main government building, on the central square of Chisinau (the city better known in Russian as Kishinev). The seat of government is an immense Soviet-era structure of drafty, high-ceilinged offices and endless hallways that seem to be straight out of “The Shining.” I went there to ask the prime minister, Iurie Leanca, about the same topic: Are you ready for what may be coming?

“Honestly, what we don’t count on is to be ready to resist militarily some outside intervention,” he said. “Look at the Ukrainian example. The Ukrainian army is much bigger than the Moldovan one. It’s not a feasible solution. What we count on is a de-escalation of the situation, to hope that everyone, especially in the east, understands that this tension isn’t good for anyone. So I hope that this” — Russia’s slow-motion dismantling of Ukraine — “is just a one-time episode.”

Does he actually believe that Russian President Vladimir Putin will stop at Ukraine? He demurred. He knows he walks a knife’s edge — every word he utters is studied carefully in Moscow. But he went on to take note of a troubling trend: a pronounced increase in the tempo of Russian troop “exercises” in Transnistria, which sits just an hour away from Chisinau.