Of course, but if they were across Ukraine having successfully taken it Moldova would be next.

Transnistria

>Transnistria, officially the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic (PMR), is an unrecognised breakaway state that is internationally recognised as a part of Moldova under military occupation by Russia. Transnistria controls most of the narrow strip of land between the Dniester river and the Moldovan–Ukrainian border, as well as some land on the other side of the river's bank. Its capital and largest city is Tiraspol. Transnistria has been recognised only by three other unrecognised or partially recognised breakaway states: Abkhazia, Artsakh and South Ossetia.

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Yep. It’s the LPR/DPR playbook like in Ukraine, and several previous conflicts. It’s what they do.

Definitely did. Invade those two then try to make EU states join them.

It's what they offered last month, had their army not been finished at that point it would be a lot more possible countries like Hungary would swap.

Early in the war Lukashenko showed a battle map showing all the places where Russian was planning to attack Ukraine from, and one those place was a Russian controlled Moldova. In reality Russia needed a Ukrainian land bridge to Transnistria to make an invasion possible but Ukraine never let Russia take that much territory.

There's another interesting idea I heard that Putin was actually planning on conquering or subduing Ukraine, then he was going to mobilize Russia to get the military he needed to take on the other countries on his list (Moldova and Belarus would have been the safest bets for the next two countries he would have annexed), but in either case Ukrainian resistance forced him to move up his mobilization schedule before he was ready.