IAN BIRRELL: Tiny sliver of land that could drag Nato into an all-out war with ...

The attack by three men could not have been more brazen: a mid- afternoon strike on the headquarters of the state security bureau. One after another, they fired rocket-propelled grenades before jumping in their car and speeding off.

Smoke billowed from the building on the corner of Karl Marx Street and several windows were shattered but no one was hurt – it was a bank holiday so no staff were inside.

This mysterious attack on Easter Monday was merely the first in a series of incidents that have sparked fears Russia’s struggling invasion of Ukraine may soon explode wider.

For they are happening in Transnistria, a sliver of land on Ukraine’s western flank which broke away from Moldova during the collapse of the Soviet Union and remains firmly under Moscow’s thumb.

The incidents are accompanied by increasingly bellicose threats from the Kremlin – and fit Vladimir Putin’s cruel playbook by stirring tensions that he then uses as a flimsy excuse to send in his troops.

Bizarrely, one of the Easter Monday attackers dropped his grenade launcher and it was revealed to be a Russian-made type used only by the armed forces of Moscow, Transnistria and the African nation of Gabon.

‘I don’t think these were the Gabonese,’ commented a Moldovan minister drily.

Little wonder there is growing alarm in this small European nation of 3.5million people that they will be dragged into the Ukrainian war, a move that could add to pressure for Western intervention given the country’s close relationship with neighbouring Romania, a member of both Nato and the EU.

‘Our assessment indicates the hardline pro-Russian camp is behind all this to get Russia to intervene,’ said Mihai Popsoi, head of the ruling party’s parliamentary group. ‘These people don’t breathe without approval from the Kremlin.’

Popsoi admits to profound worries as Moldova relies on its neutrality for security more than on its small conscript army – especially with 1,500 Russian ‘peacekeepers’ based just one hour’s drive from Tiraspol, Transnistria’s capital, an isolated place of 400,000 people trapped in time from its Soviet past.

‘Hope and optimism is not a good strategy – but it is all we have,’ he said.

Yet this Russian-born York University graduate, whose father returned to Moldova to fight against the separatists in the early 1990s, adds they have endured ‘30 years of anxiety over the frozen conflict’ in Transnistria.

Transnistria, an impoverished area not even formally recognised by Russia, feels like a hangover from yesteryear with statues of Lenin, hammer and sickle insignia and black-and-white portraits of Soviet heroes hanging by the main street.

But when I sneaked in this week, I also saw Russian ‘peacekeeping’ soldiers, military barracks and new armed checkpoints. Sources told me there has been significant recent work to upgrade the airport for handling military planes.

Tensions started rising after a senior Russian general said last month the Kremlin intended to take control of southern Ukraine to create a direct land link to Transnistria where he claimed there was ‘oppression of the Russian-speaking population’.

This was followed by calls from politicians in Transnistria for recognition as an independent state in the face of ‘attacks’ and Nato meddling – a disturbing echo of the fake claims made by Putin’s stooges in the Donbas region of Ukraine before the war.

It is believed that there are 7,000 troops under Kremlin control, including Transnistria’s own forces, along with an old Soviet arms dump containing 20,000 tonnes of munitions.

Ukrainian intelligence is warning Putin may use Victory Day next Monday – marking Russia’s 1945 defeat of Nazi Germany – to create a pretext for invasion.

While in Transnistria, I watched TV crews film

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