In a sign that flames from the war in Ukraine are already licking neighboring Moldova, that country’s pro-Russian former president, Igor Dodon, now an opposition leader, has been arrested on suspicion of treason and corruption. 

The move came a day after Russia’s deputy foreign minister, Andrei Rudenko, said Moscow would not like to see Moldovan authorities “settling scores with their former political rivals.” Subsequent to Mr. Dodon’s arrest, the Kremlin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, called on Moldovan authorities to respect his rights and warned that Moscow is closely monitoring the case. 

That it is a curious case is something of an understatement. According to Reuters, Mr. Dodon told journalists that the judge was carrying out a “political order” from the country’s pro-Western president, Maia Sandu, who succeeded Mr. Dodon in 2020. He will be under house arrest for 30 days to allow prosecutors to investigate allegations of corruption and treason. Yet the Moldovan foreign minister, Nicu Popescu, said Mr. Dodon’s detention was “unrelated to geopolitical events.”

In this fractious corner of eastern Europe, local events of late tend to commingle with the geopolitical. Sandwiched between Moldova, a poor country and former Soviet Socialist Republic, and Ukraine is its tiny region of Transnistria, a pro-Russian breakaway state that has hosted a permanent detachment of Russian soldiers for several years. A spate of recent attacks and explosions there were widely seen as Russian false flag operations, though Russian separatists pinned them on Ukraine. 

Russian officials have openly signaled that one of their strategic goals is to extend their coveted “land bridge” from the battered port city of Mariupol in the east of Ukraine all the way west to Transnistria. That is a threat that some in the West have taken very seriously, including Britain, which as the Sun and other newspapers have reported is said to be preparing to ship weapons to Moldova. 

“I would want to see Moldova equipped to NATO standard,” the British foreign secretary, Elizabeth Truss, told The Telegraph. “This is a discussion we’re having with our allies.”

Mr. Dodon has taken an openly contrarian stance on Moldova’s drawing closer to the NATO military fold. Earlier this month he said on his Telegram channel, “We don’t need NATO,” adding: “Military ‘aid’ from NATO may turn out to be a notorious disservice that will only make us worse, bring grief to our country and turn our soldiers and our people into cannon fodder.”

While neutrality is enshrined in Moldova’s constitution, the country’s current president, Ms. Sandu, has in the past tilted publicly toward the European Union and more privately toward Britain. Issuing statements perceived as aiming to please the Kremlin would certainly stand Mr. Dodon in no good stead with Ms. Sandu or those in her pro-Western administration. Could they be construed as treasonous? That might be for the Moldovan prosecutor-general’s office to decide.

Radio Free Europe reported that Mr. Popescu said the case against Mr. Dodon, who served as president between 2016 and 2020, is not the only one to be launched. He said that there have been multiple indictments, and that Moldova is seeking the extradition of “several oligarchs … who have stolen a lot of money from Moldova and have escaped to other countries.” As to whether any of those countries could include Russia, he did not specify. Moldova declared its independence from the former Soviet Union in August 1991.