A man draped in the Moldovan flag takes part in a pro-EU rally of the ruling Party of Action and Solidarity, in Chisinau, Moldova, on Friday.Vadim Ghirda/The Associated Press
Mass arrests, allegations of vote buying and rumours of a looming foreign invasion. The stakes in Moldova’s election are plain in the local headlines, only some of which have any connection to reality.
Polls suggest President Maia Sandu's Party of Action and Solidarity is likely to lose its majority.Vladislav Culiomza/Reuters
This tiny country of 2.4 million people – wedged between Ukraine and the eastern edge of NATO – goes to the polls Sunday to cast ballots in an election that pits a pro-European party against Kremlin-backed forces. The vote is being viewed as a key test of Moscow’s ability to influence foreign elections now that the United States has largely withdrawn from its efforts to promote democracy and fight disinformation abroad.
“Our sovereignty, independence, territorial integrity and European future are in danger,” President Maia Sandu said in a speech this week, in which the pro-European leader alleged the Kremlin was spending hundreds of millions of euros to influence the election, including direct vote buying.
“The Kremlin believes that we are all for sale. That we are too small to resist. That we are not a country, only a territory,” Ms. Sandu said. “But Moldova is our home. And our home is not for sale.”
Polls suggest that Ms. Sandu’s Party of Action and Solidarity is likely to lose its majority in the country’s 101-seat parliament, with at least one recent survey suggesting that the Patriotic Bloc – a new grouping of pro-Russian parties – could win the most votes.
The bloc is a temporary electoral alliance that came together in June when Igor Dodon and Vladimir Voronin – both former Moldovan presidents with thick ties to Moscow – put aside their personal rivalry in an attempt to wrest control from Ms. Sandu’s party.
A clear winner is unlikely to emerge on Sunday. Instead, the result will likely kick-start a battle to form a governing coalition, with smaller parties vying for the role of kingmaker. There are also fears that the Kremlin could seize upon a cloudy result and try to foment unrest.
On Sunday, Moldovan police arrested 74 people who allegedly planned to instigate mass riots and destabilize the country around the election. Victor Furtuna, Moldova’s chief prosecutor from the Office for Combating Organized Crime and Special Cases, said the group had undergone training in Serbia.
As a parliamentary election looms in the former Soviet state, Reuters has discovered a surge in online content from Moldovan Orthodox parish accounts, urging the faithful to take a stand against the ruling government's push towards the West.
Reuters
Separately, an undercover investigation by the independent newspaper Ziarul de Garda found that Moldovans were being offered payments from a Russian state bank if they created fake social media profiles and used them to promote the Kremlin’s election narratives.
“They are not limited in tools, they are not limited in money, they are not limited in creativity,” Polina Panainte, deputy director of ADEPT, an election-monitoring watchdog, said of the Kremlin and its allies in Moldova.
A statue of Lenin, with the words 'Board of Honour' written in Cyrillic, Romanian and Russian.Vadim Ghirda/The Associated Press
Moscow has long meddled in Moldova, a former Soviet republic that still displays statues of Vladimir Lenin even as it seeks membership in the European Union. But the Kremlin’s efforts could have more of an impact than in the past, owing to U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, which until this year had funded election-monitoring programs and provided indirect support to independent media.
“Newsrooms cut investigative desks, election monitors reduced their coverage and civic initiatives lost momentum at the very moment when the country faces an intense geopolitical struggle over its orientation,” Laurentiu Plesca, a political analyst with the German Marshall Fund of the United States, said of the effects of the USAID cut-off.
Meanwhile, the Kremlin’s effort to influence the election appears unprecedented in size and scope. Mihai Mogildea, deputy director of the Institute for European Policies and Reforms, a Moldovan think tank that promotes European integration, estimated that Moscow has spent about US$200-million on the campaign – or slightly more than 1 per cent of Moldova’s gross domestic product.
By comparison, total U.S. assistance to Moldova last year amounted to US$194-million. More than half of that went to economic development projects, with US$66-million allocated for “governance,” a category that included assistance to projects supporting rule of law and human rights, in addition to the promotion of democracy.
Leaders of the Patriotic Electoral Bloc Igor Dodon, Vladimir Voronin, Irina Vlah and Vasile Tarlev. The sign on the screen reads, 'We believe in Moldova!'Vladislav Culiomza/Reuters
Losing control of parliament – which appoints the prime minister and cabinet – would complicate Ms. Sandu’s efforts to push through reforms that would keep the country on track to join the EU. Ms. Sandu was re-elected to a second term last year, and a narrow majority of Moldovans voted in a 2024 referendum to pursue further integration with Europe.
Her popularity, however, has been dinted by the country’s poor economic performance, with prices rising nearly 50 per cent over the past four years. Much of that increase was due to the government’s decision to stop buying Russian natural gas after Moscow’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, replacing it with more expensive imports from Romania.
Moldova has a population of about 2.4 million people.Vadim Ghirda/The Associated Press
“People living in rural areas with very low pensions, with low salaries, are vulnerable to these kind of messages that we should go back to buying energy from Russia, trading with Russia, because the past was so good and prices were cheaper for everything,” Mr. Mogildea said. He added that the EU needed to push back by making it clearer that Moldova has a real chance to join the 27-country bloc in the coming years.
The Kremlin’s main message to Moldovans plays on widespread fears that the country could be dragged into the war next door in Ukraine if it aligns itself with the EU and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
Russia’s SVR foreign intelligence service claimed this week, without evidence, that NATO was building up a military force in neighbouring Romania. The SVR alleged that pro-EU forces are planning to falsify the election results, and that NATO is preparing to intervene militarily if Moldovans take to the streets to protest.
The message “Europe is preparing to occupy Moldova” – a line borrowed from the SVR press release – was then picked up and repeated tens of thousands of times through pro-Russian accounts on social media.
Moldova has struggled to escape Moscow’s influence since the end of the Cold War. Nearly 10 per cent of its territory is under the control of a pro-Russian breakaway government – the self-declared state of Transnistria – that is protected by 1,500 Russian troops who have been stationed there since a 1992 civil war.
Residents of Transnistria, which has a population of almost 400,000, are allowed to vote in Sunday’s election, giving a further boost to the Patriotic Bloc’s chances.
The government building, decorated with European Union and Moldovan flags, in Chisinau, Moldova.Vadim Ghirda/The Associated Press