Here's the big issue. Ukraine and Moldova have large Russian Speaking populations. A large, largely ethnic/culturally Russian or Russian connected population thriving in a largely democratic environment such as the EU poses huge political problems for Putin. In much the same way that Taiwan and to a lesser extent Hong Kong causes political problems for Xi. That Chinese culture thrives in a democracy causes people to ask "why can't we have that?". The existence of the independent democratic republics of Russian or Chinese heritage creates something to compare the authoritarian regimes to, and not in a flattering way.
Russian propaganda also uses anti-Russian sentiment that resulted from the Russian invasions/interventions to justify those interventions retroactively.
Another thing that mustn't be ignored is that Russian speaking populations are often pretty old, many of them are pensioners or underemployed white trash. These people spend a lot of time watching Russian language news made in Russia, and these are 99% complete lies about what their own local government does, what Russia is like, retarded conspiracy theories about the West, etc.
You can't comprehend how demented and brainwashed people who were fed this crap for decades are by now. I know several of them personally. It's absolutely impossible to get through to them. They will believe the most retarded Russian lie (biolabs lol) while saying something they can see direct video proof of is made up because Russian media never mentioned it or said it's a "provocation", whatever that even means.
This causes issues for the country these people live in, because many Russian speakers are actively hostile to it while receiving welfare gibs and contributing little. They also can't be reached because they are fed a stream of lies 24/7. I have to reiterate, this isn't the tendentious reporting we get from western MSM, these are outright lies. Imagine if every single political and even random flavour news was reported the way tranny news are reported in the US. And unlike in the US, there are no dissenting voices.
This is also why Russian media get banned in Europe. It's not "banning opposing perspectives", it's "Hitler was a Jew" and "Ukrainians shell their own cities to make Russia look bad" tier horseshit.
I've heard from people whose grandparents have suddenly started to get a negative view of Russia's war in Ukraine after seeing the destruction, corpses, the suffering of the people, after they started to watch normal news after Russian lies were blocked.