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Moldovan polls marred by Russian “hybrid war”
from BBC MONITOR 33
In October, Moldovans voted to amend their country’s constitution to include their aspiration to EU membership. On 3 November, they re-elected proEuropean President Maia Sandu and entrusted her with working towards joining the EU over the next four years. Moldova specialist Natasha Matyukhina reports.
Both votes highlighted Moldova’s determination to move away from Russia’s sphere of influence and to join the EU, where this former Soviet republic, and one of Europe’s poorest countries, hopes to find a peaceful and prosperous future. Russia, however, has no plans to let this happen.
Russia used significant financial resources to support pro-Russian parties and politicians, loyal media and pro-Russian clergy in Moldova to unleash what many commentators described as an unprecedented propaganda and disinformation campaign. The aim was to discourage Moldovans from supporting the move for EU membership and to prevent the re-election of Sandu, who managed to secure EU candidate status for her country and opened EU membership talks with Brussels during her first term.
Moldova’s determination to move away from Russia’s sphere of influence
Hybrid war
“This was a real hybrid war. We have seen what Russia is capable of and what it can do to influence the electoral process,” said Andrei Curararu, a security expert from Moldovan NGO WatchDog.
He said Russia employed Moscowbased Moldovan oligarch Ilan Sor –who was given a prison sentence for his involvement in the theft of $1bn from three Moldovan banks in 2014 – to use his ties in Moldova to create “networks” of vulnerable citizens. These were mainly pensioners and residents of poor rural districts who were willing to accept “financial assistance” from Russia in exchange for voting “No” in the EU referendum – and supporting a presidential candidate who supported close ties with Moscow.
Moldovan police chief Viorel Cernauteanu said that in SeptemberOctober alone a bank in Moscow linked to the Russian military-industrial complex transferred $39m to Sor’s “networks”, a huge amount for a country with a population of under 3 million people.
Investigative journalists who joined the networks, while pretending to be willing recipients of the “assistance”, obtained a wealth of photographic, video and material evidence, which was handed over to the police. This exposed the scale of Russia’s efforts to bribe Moldovans. According to the police, by October the “networks” had at least 130,000 members.
As the police were taking measures to stop the bank transfers, Sor, with the cooperation of the Russian Orthodox Church, flew hundreds of clerics from its Moldovan arm, the Moldovan Orthodox Church, to Moscow and used them as “cash mules”: for a small fee, each of them brought back to Moldova 10,000 euros in cash, which did not require declaration at customs. Those clerics who openly campaigned for pro-Russian presidential candidates and against EU membership in their sermons were also issued with bank cards to receive payments for their activities.
These efforts were coupled with a large-scale propaganda and disinformation campaign.
“This is a triumph of democracy over the hybrid war.”
Propaganda and disinformation
For months, Moldova’s pro-Russian TV channels, websites, newspapers and social media groups had spread false information about the EU, claiming that, as an EU member, Moldova would lose its national identity, agree to accept values which went against its Orthodox Christian beliefs and sell its land – the agricultural country’s main asset – to foreigners.
They also skilfully exploited Moldovans’ fear of a Russian military attack and invasion, alleging that neighbouring Ukraine had brought this on itself by declaring it planned to join the EU and Nato.
The “hottest autumn ever”
One of Moldova’s leading proEuropean weekly publications, Ziarul de Garda, saw September and October 2024 as the “hottest autumn ever”, marred by Russia’s “most slanderous, most violent and disruptive destabilisation campaign since the country’s independence” in 1991.
The Kremlin said it “does not interfere in other people’s affairs” and accused Moldova’s pro-European authorities of “denying many citizens a right to say that they support having good relations with Russia”.
Andrei Curararu welcomed Moldovans’ support for European integration in the referendum and the re-election of Sandu: “This is a triumph of democracy over the hybrid war. But this triumph taught us many lessons which we have to learn,” he said.
He warned that Russia would not stop its efforts to interfere in Moldova’s domestic affairs and would seek to install a pro-Russian government in Moldova following next year’s parliamentary election. This is particularly important because Moldova is a parliamentary republic.
Addressing European leaders shortly after her re-election, Maia Sandu called for “help for Moldova to defend its democracy”.
“Our people displayed amazing resilience in the face of huge challenges and foreign meddling... We need additional support to strengthen our institutions so they can better defend Moldovan democracy. We want to ensure that Moldovans, not Russian money, make decisions in Moldova. And naturally, Moldova’s path to the EU is important not only for Moldova, but also for the stability and security of the entire continent,” she said.
