What if Russia intervenes in Transnistria and threatens Moldova?
Reinforcing Transnistria and menacing Moldova drags NATO up an escalation ladder: VIX +13, Nasdaq -6, defense primes bid modestly. Rhymes with the slow-burn Donbas buildup of 2021 that markets discounted until the full invasion. Transmission is European risk sentiment; Moldova itself is too small to matter directly. Forward angle: a non-NATO target lets Russia probe Western resolve cheaply, so absent a Romania/NATO spillover the market reaction should be more contained than the headline VIX suggests.
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The butterfly cascade
How this trigger trickles across markets, left → right — the root shock, its first‑order moves, then the ripple effects. Drag any node; tap a market for its real price history.
Resolution timeline — how this probability is moving
Our model's odds (electric blue) over time vs the market's (Polymarket, amber), from the past toward the 1–3 years horizon. Each dot is a real macro event that nudged the probability — green pushed it up, red pushed it down. Tap a dot for the source. Loading the probability audit trail…
What it would mean
If this plays out, it is a risk-off shock. Russia reinforces Transnistria and threatens Moldova, drawing NATO into an escalation ladder. The trigger decomposes into signed root‑shocks — Defense spending ▲ · Geopolitical risk ▲ · Risk appetite ▼ — which propagate through our causal graph to the markets below.