Why Is Israel Helping This Putin Ally Evade the Law?

If Israel wants to signal the Kremlin that its support for Hamas has consequences, it holds a ready tool: Extradite Ilan Shor, the businessman-cum-politician who fled Moldova while appealing his conviction in a $1 billion bank-fraud case. He’s been working with Russia ever since to unseat the nation’s pro-European government.

For most countries that accuse Russia of interfering in their elections, the issue is both hard to prove and primarily diplomatic: The attempts to manipulate votes constitute serious hostile acts, but Moscow lacks the power to change outcomes. Not so in Moldova, whose vulnerability was exposed in Sunday’s nationwide municipal balloting, seen as a plebiscite on the country’s decision to bid for membership in the European Union and a test-run for next year’s presidential election.

Moldova, a small ex-Soviet state squeezed between EU member Romania and Ukraine, lies within the sphere of influence that Putin has gone to war to reestablish. It has hosted a pro-Russia separatist enclave, protected by Russian troops, since the early 1990s, and lost much of its more ambitious youth to emigration since. Toppling President Maia Sandu’s pro-western government was a sub-goal of the Kremlin’s plans when it invaded Ukraine last February. Frustrated on the battlefield before it could reach the Moldovan border and infuriated by Sandu’s decision to apply for EU membership, Russia cut off the nation’s natural gas and power supplies. The move forced a brutal switch to more costly energy, and a collapse in Moldova’s economic growth from a post-Covid-19 boom of 14% in 2021, to a contraction of 5% last year.

Shor has tried to capitalize on the resulting discontent by funding regular protests, calling for the government to resign, spreading disinformation through his media assets and promising a return to cheap energy and Russia’s embrace once Sandu’s “regime” is gone. There was even an alleged Russia-backed coup plot. Though born in Israel, Shor moved back to Moldova with his parents as a child and followed his father into business. He got into banking, the main airport’s duty-free franchise and — after falling under suspicion for massive fraud — politics. As Moscow’s preferred party in Moldova, the Socialists lost popularity when the depth of its Russian funding were exposed. Shor became Moscow’s new favorite, and his party leaders were received warmly in Moscow. He has denied receiving support from Moscow.

On Sunday, Sandu’s ruling Party of Action and Solidarity lost in cities, where people have to buy gas to heat their homes, but did better in rural areas to win a 40% plurality of the overall vote. To scrape that mixed endorsement, Sandu’s government resorted to steps she herself said she regretted, in a speech to EU parliamentarians on the eve of the vote. Those included closing websites, suspending the licenses ofTV stations owned by, or affiliated with Shor, and — at the last minute — banning his party, Chance. “No democracy likes taking such measures, but neither can we allow Russia to threaten our security,’’ she said.