LESS THAN HALF the size of Ireland, Moldova is a small country and amongst Europe’s poorest.
From Moscow’s perspective, it is an artificial state created by Stalin on historically Russian territory. Most of Moldova was annexed to the Russian Empire in 1812 and it remained a Russian province until 1918.
Between World Wars One and Two, the country (then known as Bessarabia) formed part of Romania before being forcibly annexed by the USSR in 1940.
When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Moldova emerged onto the world stage but struggled to thrive. Moldova’s woes included poverty, corruption, and poor integration of national minorities.
Moldova suffers from endemic emigration. The last Soviet census in 1989 recorded 4.28 million people living in Moldova but that number is now less than three million, and about 350,000 of these live in the separatist republic of Transnistria.
Most have migrated to the European Union, particularly to Italy because of linguistic similarities.
From the beginning of independence, the Kremlin has done what it can to control its former dominion. To complicate matters further, Russia has two useful pawns to play on the larger Moldovan chessboard – Transnistria and Gagauzia.
These tiny pro-Russian regions (the size of Tipperary and Waterford respectively) have been used by the Kremlin to paralyse Moldova politically and stymy any attempts to move towards the EU.
The 2020 presidential election – which pitted EU enthusiast Maia Sandu against the more Russia-leaning Igor Dodon – underscored the geopolitical split in Moldova.
Sandu’s message of reform and EU integration resonated with the electorate, particularly with the diaspora, and she won the presidency with almost 58% of the vote.
Following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Moscow intensified its hybrid war against Moldova, weaponising trade and energy supplies, funnelling money to pro-Russian proxies, and fomenting civil conflict.
Russia’s targeting of Ukraine’s electricity grid caused blackouts in Moldova and, in December 2022, Moscow switched off the country’s gas supply.
When energy blackmail didn’t produce the desired result, the Kremlin shifted its strategy to coordinating with pro-Russian proxies to replace the government with a pliant alternative.
Central to these efforts is Ilan Shor, a fugitive oligarch who conspires against the Moldovan government from exile. Shor has been sentenced to 15 years in prison for fraud and his central role in the 2014 theft of $1 billion (about €927 million) from three Moldovan banks in an elaborate money-laundering scam.
This amounted to more than Moldova’s annual budget and 12.5% of its GDP. Average salaries in Moldova at the time hovered just above US$200 (around €185) per month.
As Maia Sandu’s four-year term as president expired this month, she decided to marry her re-election campaign with a referendum on a constitutional amendment to reflect the country’s aspiration to join the EU.
This provided Russia and its proxies with an ideal opportunity to influence the campaign by attempting to buy votes and spread disinformation.
In the run-up to the local elections last year, Moldova’s government discovered that Moscow was funnelling payments to proxies via prepaid bank cards, which could be periodically topped up, avoiding the need for suitcases of cash.
Government intelligence services estimated that around €50 million was funnelled into Moldova to sponsor political players, the equivalent of 0.4% of annual GDP, or 1% of the government’s entire revenues for the year.
To combat this kind of interference, the government established a new court to try corruption cases and a centre for combating misinformation.
Moldova’s national security advisor estimates that Russia spent around €100 million on interfering with the recent vote. Investigators claim that €15 million was funnelled into the bank accounts of 130,000 citizens to influence their vote.
Cash mules were also used to bring money into Moldova to buy votes and political influence. At Moldova’s only international airport, customs officers discovered that large amounts of cash was being brought into the country by passengers arriving via connecting flights from Moscow.
The sums were usually just below the legal limit of €10,000 and transported by people of very modest means, many of whom had never travelled outside the country before, and only stayed in Moscow for a couple of days.
Eventually, the authorities decided to seize the money. In one day alone, customs officials seized €1.5 million from passengers and, according to authorities, no one has asked for the money back.
Disinformation proliferated during the election. Despite his criminal convictions and exiled status, Ilan Shor ran hundreds of ads on Facebook, which were viewed 155 million times during the campaign. Leaflets circulated comparing the EU unfavourably to Putin’s rival project, the Eurasian Economic Union.
While the Kremlin-sponsored union was presented as a respecter of traditional family values, it was asserted that EU membership would mean the breakdown of Moldovan society, including imposed “sex identity tests” on children.
Another leaflet proclaimed confidently that the referendum had nothing to do with European integration but would allow “the ruling regime” to amend the constitution at will. The government would then use this power to “liquidate independent Moldova”.
In the presidential ballot on Sunday, Sandu was the frontrunner with 42% of votes.
She now faces a second round run off on 3 November with the Socialist Party’s Alexandr Stoianoglo, who although taking only 26% of votes, has more obvious sources of transfers from eliminated candidates.
The referendum result was extraordinarily close. With more than 1.5 millions votes cast, the margin of victory was less than 12,000 votes. Linking a referendum related to EU membership with an individual administration was always going to be high risk.
During much of the last four years, Covid-19 and Russia’s invasion of neighbouring Ukraine have caused the government to lurch from one crisis to another.
Inflation galloped to 30% in 2022-23 and struggling citizens are as likely to blame the government as geopolitics for increased prices and bills.
Moscow’s hybrid warfare involves not only disinformation and cyber attacks but also more old-fashioned methods of cash payments to bribe judges, politicians and voters, influence journalists, and manufacture protests.
Not surprisingly, Moldova’s new national security strategy identifies Russia’s goal as taking political and economic control of the country.
However, Moldova has limited capacity to combat the waves of disinformation and external meddling to which society had been exposed over many years.
While these weaknesses predate Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the war has brought them into sharp focus.
Addressing them is no longer a matter of choice but, rather, a condition for Moldova’s path to EU membership and ability to escape from Russia’s shadow.
Donnacha Ó Beacháin is Professor of Politics at Dublin City University. For more than two decades he has worked and researched in the post-Soviet region. His forthcoming book ‘Unfinished Empire: Russian Imperialism in Ukraine and the Near Abroad’ will be published by Agenda in March.
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