Russia’s War on Elections in Moldova Is No Hoax

Nicu Popescu, Moldova’s ex-foreign minister, delivered the same message again and again as I followed him for a day last week campaigning for a seat in Sunday’s parliamentary election. I know we always say your vote is important, he told his audiences, but this time it really is: your best and probably only chance to join the European Union depends on it.

What Popescu didn’t say – because why would the kindergarten teachers, construction workers and others he spoke to care – was that this will also be a test of the EU’s ability to act geopolitically. Sunday could for the same reason be its last chance to stabilize this part of its eastern frontier against an increasingly destructive Russia. And if it cannot succeed here, it’s hard to believe Europe can do so in Ukraine, which would be left all but surrounded by unfriendly states. Which is, of course, why the vote is such a big deal for Moscow, too.

Popescu is convinced Moldova has a real chance of completing its accession talks with the EU, together with Albania and Montenegro, by the end of 2028, to be followed by membership. The European Commission is rooting for it, so he’s probably right. But that applies only if his Party of Solidarity and Action keeps its majority in the legislature. Without one, driving EU laws — 170,000 pages of them — through parliament in three years would be all but impossible. Which is why the government believes Russia has spent more on trying to fix elections in Moldova over the past year than it had over the previous 30.

Those efforts are also far more difficult to track and counter, because so much of the campaign is now conducted on social media. I have to hope Europe’s embassies are sending tech-literate staff out here to watch and learn, because maintaining a democratic system in the era of TikTok bots is a problem that’s coming to us all, and soon. This is not a drill or a hoax. Your next election will take place mainly on social media, and Russia will not be the only player seeking advantage.

Polls routinely say a large majority of Moldovans want to join the EU, but they also suggest Sunday’s vote is too close to call. On Monday, President Maia Sandu sounded the alarm in an address to the nation, warning of the consequences should pro-Russia leaders (some of whom have tactically repositioned themselves as pro-European) come to power. The country would become a “launchpad” for Moscow’s destabilization efforts, especially in Ukraine, she said. It takes no imagination to see planeloads of “tourists” transiting Chisinau airport on their way to infiltrate Odesa, a hour across the border and behind Ukrainian lines. All it would take is a government that doesn’t want to stop them.

These warnings are, of course, self-serving. PAS has disappointed many. Its promised efforts to clean up the justice system and official corruption have only begun. The high hopes many Moldovans had that the party would usher in better lives when it took over in 2021 have been realized instead as stagnant growth and an inflation-driven cost-of-living crisis. Raids on opposition offices as the government responds to Russian interference look uncomfortably like the politically motivated raids on opposition parties conducted under previous regimes.

The opposition, meanwhile, is offering illusory enticements from free cars for veterans and large families, to $12,000 for every newborn or the return of cheap Russian energy. None of this is feasible (there’s no spare money and no working, empty pipeline to import Russian gas). But as we’re learning in the West, when people are angry, facts don’t win. Populists do.

The reality is that given the scale of external shocks that have hit Moldova since Sandu first won the presidency in 2019, it’s a minor miracle the party is even in the running and the economy isn’t worse. Think Covid, a major war across the border, loss of the country’s primary trade route in Odesa and an energy crisis to make those hammering incumbents in much richer countries pale to insignificance. “Show me someone who could have done better,” Popescu told me, with a rare edge of bitterness.

And that’s before accounting for the Russian interference. The PAS-run government’s claims have been documented by a series of independent investigations, including Bloomberg News’ Alberto Nardelli. He exposed a plan for thwarting PAS that was written in the Kremlin.

Natalia Zaharescu was among undercover journalists at Chisinau’s Ziarul de Garda newspaper who, before last year’s presidential election, recorded activists paid by Ilan Shor — a fugitive oligarch and politician convicted of playing the central role in a $1 billion Moldova bank fraud in 2014 — handing out money to buy votes. As soon as that effort failed and Sandu won again (thanks to getting a huge majority among pro-EU diaspora), Zaharescu’s undercover alias was invited to join a troll farm formed to try again, this time by defeating PAS in Sunday’s parliamentary vote.