"Russian propaganda claimed Moldovans were massacring civilians, I've explicitly said I disbelieve this. So much for my status as Russian propaganda mouthpiece."
I explicitly pointed the exact piece of the russian propaganda you're trumpeting, but you are deliberately choosing to ignore it and to consider instead whatever you want to!
"«Moldovan forces did not fight with locals,» Basic facts dispute this."
Actually, only claims (not facts) dispute this. The involvement of "Moldovan forces" came much later, because when the first incidents happened Moldova did not had an army but only a police force which definitely did not had the competence to perform large scale drills like separation of a (newly declared) country in halves! The first causalities were the Moldovan policemen in a Tiraspol police post. I don't know where you get your sources from, a reference would have been welcomed.
"As far as I know the 'necessary natural preconditions' for bloodshed are fairly low you just need a couple groups angry at each other and some guns on one or both sides and the lack of an inhibiting leviathan. That certainly existed in Transnistria without Russian involvement."
If you go that far consider that loosely controlled armed groups existed all over Russia itself and nowhere it was treated as possible cause for genocide or whatnot. The preconditions that I was referring to is the base (usually ideological in nature) on which an irreconcilable dispute can grow. This wasn't the case in Moldova because Moldovan authorities were very open to peacefully address the kind of issues that Russia claims were central in the Transnistrian conflict. Just look at the Gagauzian Autonomy and take it as a reference for settling a minority related issue without the involvement of russian tanks!
I explicitly pointed the exact piece of the russian propaganda you're trumpeting, but you are deliberately choosing to ignore it and to consider instead whatever you want to!
"«Moldovan forces did not fight with locals,» Basic facts dispute this."
Actually, only claims (not facts) dispute this. The involvement of "Moldovan forces" came much later, because when the first incidents happened Moldova did not had an army but only a police force which definitely did not had the competence to perform large scale drills like separation of a (newly declared) country in halves! The first causalities were the Moldovan policemen in a Tiraspol police post. I don't know where you get your sources from, a reference would have been welcomed.
"As far as I know the 'necessary natural preconditions' for bloodshed are fairly low you just need a couple groups angry at each other and some guns on one or both sides and the lack of an inhibiting leviathan. That certainly existed in Transnistria without Russian involvement."
If you go that far consider that loosely controlled armed groups existed all over Russia itself and nowhere it was treated as possible cause for genocide or whatnot. The preconditions that I was referring to is the base (usually ideological in nature) on which an irreconcilable dispute can grow. This wasn't the case in Moldova because Moldovan authorities were very open to peacefully address the kind of issues that Russia claims were central in the Transnistrian conflict. Just look at the Gagauzian Autonomy and take it as a reference for settling a minority related issue without the involvement of russian tanks!