As campaigning for Moldova’s presidential election and referendum on EU relations entered its final month late last month, violent splashes of red and yellow paint appeared across government buildings in the capital, Chisinau.
That coincided with a series of faked government and EU documents starting to spread on local social networks.
Meanwhile, official broadcasters in Moldova’s breakaway, Russian-speaking Kremlin-backed Transdniestria region released footage of new military training, while an organization for Russian speakers in Moldova appealed to Russian President Vladimir Putin to “protect” ethnic Russians there “by all available means.”
Sandwiched between Ukraine and EU member state Romania, Moldova has spent decades teetering between the West and the Kremlin — and the presidential vote on Oct. 20 and accompanying referendum on closer EU relations might be critical in deciding which way it goes.
Right now, those who wish to embrace Europe appear to have the lead, but they face a concerted and intensifying Kremlin-backed effort to push things the other way.
Moldova is substantially smaller than Ukraine — its population stands at about 2.5 million — and Putin’s moves to win influence there appear conducted not through bombs, tanks and drones, but conventional and social media, as well as support for local pro-Russian political players.
However, such tactics were also how the Kremlin operated in Ukraine for years. Moscow’s overall agenda in both nations as well as nearby Georgia remains broadly the same: Using whatever means it has at its disposal to keep them in Russia’s sphere of influence and prevent them turning permanently towards western Europe and the US.
That makes this month’s twin Moldova votes particularly important.
Georgia, whose ruling Georgian Dream party has taken an increasingly pro-Moscow stance in the past few years, will also go to the polls in parliamentary elections on Oct. 26.
With the Ukraine war itself in the balance, the outcomes of those Georgian and Moldovan contests will send a strong signal as to whether the Kremlin is deepening or losing control over its near abroad — and how resilient US and Western-backed democracies really are.
The Ukraine conflict has already shaped the coming votes in Georgia and Ukraine.
Recent Georgian Dream election videos have featured scenes of destruction from that war, a not-so-subtle warning that the country — formerly, like Ukraine and Moldova, a part of the old Russian-dominated Soviet Union — might face similar dangers if it turns back toward the West.
Thousands of Georgians have been taking to the streets demanding just that, particularly after the Tbilisi government passed a law designed to limit Western support for local non-governmental organizations (NGO) and media.
Some of those protesting say they want a new “colored revolution” — the term used for pro-democracy movements in post-Soviet states — to oust Georgian Dream and bring in pro-Western parties, something Moscow will be desperate to avoid.
Messaging in Moldova has been marginally more subtle, but pro-Russian channels have repeatedly suggested that if pro-Western President Maia Sandhu is re-elected, Moldova will be drawn into fighting in Ukraine.
Moldova is already suffering fuel shortages as a result of Russian military strikes on Ukrainian infrastructure on which Moldova also depends.
Other rumors spread online included that Ukrainian F-16 jets might soon be based on Moldovan airfields, as well as that closer ties with the EU would bring compulsory university “sexual education.”
Meanwhile, exiled businessman Ilan Shor, once described as “Moscow’s man in Moldova” and now living in Russia after fleeing house arrest, took to the Telegram messaging app offering Moldovan voters the equivalent of US$29 if they voted against including changing the constitution to commit to closer EU links.
Opinion polls suggest that 55 to 65 percent of Moldovan voters will back the EU proposition, compared with about 24 to 35 percent opposed — although uncertainties over the true number of Moldovan voters inject an element of unpredictability.
The second round of the presidential vote might also yield surprises.
Polls show Sandhu taking roughly one-quarter of first-round votes, the remainder divided between 10 other candidates, but she must then face off against just a single candidate, most likely former prosecutor-general Alexander Stoianoglo, who is backed by pro-Russian parties including those linked to Shor.
Aged 37 and born in Tel Aviv, Shor received Russian citizenship in May and has been sentenced to more than a decade in prison on bank fraud and other charges in his absence — allegations he denies — but remains highly active on Telegram criticizing the Moldovan government and the West.
Western nations have been making it similarly clear where they stand, but must also avoid looking excessively heavy-handed.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited Moldova in May, announcing US$135 million in aid for energy security and to counter disinformation.
Earlier this month, Germany, France and Poland — the so-called Weimar Group who increasingly regard themselves as the real geopolitical decisionmakers of the EU — pledged their own “steadfast” support to Moldova.
In July, Moldova was officially put on an EU accession track, while talk of joining NATO has made much less progress.
While EU membership appears to remain popular, opinion polls suggest Moldovans remain more cautious about joining the Western military alliance itself. Most polls suggest no more than one-quarter favoring that option, compared with a larger proportion in Ukraine and Georgia.
The US, Canada and Britain have been outspoken in their warnings of Russian influence, warning of what they said was a Russian-instigated plot to influence Moldova’s election.
This month, the US also imposed sanctions on a Shor-founded NGO they said was “undermining democracy” in Moldova, drawing an angry denunciation from the man himself.
Shor himself has been sanctioned by the US and Britain since 2022, and the EU last year, similarly accused of subverting democracy.
According to Moldovan officials and their Western backers, recent Shor and Russian-backed efforts have included a campaign of not just disinformation, but also recruiting and paying individuals to deface buildings, spread rumors and riot.
On Monday, a Moldovan court sentenced seven people to prison for what it said were attempts to stir up violent riots during protests in March last year.
Moldovan authorities say those protests were stirred up by Shor and his network.
According to police, some of the young people arrested for vandalism in the capital last week said they were being paid by someone believed to be a front for Shor.
Earlier this year, US-funded Radio Free Europe reported that Shor had been involved in flying several hundred Moldovans to Moscow for all-expenses paid trips in which they were encouraged to promote Russian heritage and culture in Moldova after they returned.
Financial transfers from Russia to Moldova are illegal, but according to Radio Free Europe some of those flown to Moscow were also asked to smuggle money.
As well as reaching out to Moldova’s Russian-speaking minority — roughly 15 percent of the population — the Kremlin and Shor have also built a political power base in Moldova’s semiautonomous and linguistically separate region of Gagauzia, particularly with pro-Russian former governor Irina Vlah — who is also a candidate in Moldova’s 2024 presidential vote.
To an extent, Russia’s hybrid activities in Moldova reflect its failures so far in Ukraine since its February 2022 full-scale invasion.
Had Russian troops successfully captured the capital, Kyiv, and so the whole country that year, most analysts believe they would have pushed through Ukraine’s western border to link up with the Russian so-called “peacekeeping” force that has held Moldova’s separatist Transdniestria region since 1991, possibly then annexing Moldova itself in its entirety.
That now looks much less likely. When the authorities in Transdniestria publicly called for aid from Russia earlier in the year, nothing obvious was forthcoming.
Whatever happens at this election, the Kremlin and Shor probably will have a longer game in mind.
How that plays out might yet have global implications.
Peter Apps is a columnist for Reuters. The opinions expressed here are those of the author.
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