CHIȘINĂU, Moldova—“I’ll be the happiest person in the world when Moldova joins the EU… you deserve a place in the European Union.”
Those were the words spoken by Marta Kos, the EU’s commissioner for enlargement, on Moldovan Independence Day late last month. Perhaps more significant than the sentiment, however, was the recipient of her remarks: Emilian Cretu, one of Moldova’s biggest influencers. During his visit to Brussels, Kos asked Cretu to pass on her message of European solidarity to his nearly 600,000 followers.
Thanks to Cretu’s popularity, the video was viewed more than 800,000 times — roughly a third of the country’s 2.4 million population.
The unorthodox social media push underscores the urgency with which Brussels is trying counter Russian interference here, with Moldovans set to go to the polls this Sunday in a race that could determine the country’s European future.
The stakes are so high that President Maia Sandu defined the ballot as the “most consequential in [Moldova’s] history.” That’s because Sunday’s elections will decide whether her pro-EU Party of Action and Solidarity (PAS) will hold on to power, propelling the former Soviet republic towards the West — or whether pro-Moscow forces will prevail, keeping the country firmly in Russia’s orbit of influence.
The PAS is locked in a competitive race with the Russia-friendly Patriotic Electoral Bloc (BEP), led by former President Igor Dodon. Recent polling showed BEP pulling ahead, with 33.4% of the vote, compared with PAS’s 31.6%.
“The Kremlin is pouring hundreds of millions of euros to buy hundreds of thousands of votes on both banks of the Nistru river and abroad,” said Sandu, speaking at a press conference on Monday. "People are intoxicated daily with lies. Hundreds of individuals are paid to provoke disorder, violence, and spread fear."
More broadly, the EU has been contending with Russia’s extensive efforts to destabilise the bloc’s eastern neighborhood through vote-buying and online disinformation — just as the administration of US President Donald Trump cuts funding for programmes designed to curb Russian influence.
Russian propaganda on steroids
There is nothing new in Moscow relying on a plethora of disinformation techniques to sway the results of foreign ballots to its liking, especially in countries like Moldova that were once part of the Soviet Union. What’s new, analysts say, is the scale of the resources being poured into Moldova’s election.
“This interference is unprecedented — not only for Moldova, but for any other country,” Valeriu Pașa, the head of WatchDog.md, a think tank tracking local disinformation, told The Parliament. “No country or organisation is fully prepared to face this form of hybrid warfare.” According to Sandu, Russia has spent something approaching 1% of Moldova’s GDP to influence the ballot, or €150 million.
A BBC investigation unveiled last week found that a secret network tied to Moldovan oligarch Ilan Shor has been spreading pro-Russian propaganda and fake news across social media, aimed at discrediting Sandu and weakening the country’s pro-Western front.
Moscow has claimed that Sandu is a Western puppet, that PAS ultimately seeks to unite Moldova with Romania, and that the ruling party will rig the elections — just as pro-Russian forces alleged was the case in neighboring Romania last year.
More than Russian cyber influence
Nicu Popescu, a former foreign minister who’s now a candidate on the PAS parliamentary list, told The Parliament that focusing exclusively on cyber disinformation would amount to “misdiagnosing” the size of the problem.
“Russian interference is much larger…it’s well beyond disinformation,” he said, pointing to a myriad of tactics such as paying influencers, publishing propaganda books, setting up fake call centres and buying votes directly.
Popescu added that pro-Russian forces had also been preparing to ignite violence by providing military training to activists in Serbia and Bosnia.
Indeed, according to documents reviewed by Bloomberg, Russia has been planning to recruit young men to stage violent protests during and after the vote. If Sandu’s party were to win, Moscow-backed forces would claim the ballot was rigged.
Moldova's cost-of-living woes
Moldova’s bid to join the European Union has been central to Sandu’s campaign platform, But a worsening cost-of-living crisis, fueled by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in early 2022 — which led to a drastic increase in food and energy prices — is now making it harder for pro-Western forces to convince Moldovan citizens that joining the bloc will translate into a better future.
“Those who fall behind are vulnerable to disinformation or simply hold a critical stance towards the government, regardless of whether the criticism is reinforced or not by Russian sources,” Denis Cenusa, a fellow with the Democratic Resilience Program at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), told The Parliament.
Historically one of the poorest countries in Europe, Moldova has seen its people struggle even more to make ends meet since the start of the war, given its economy was heavily tied to both Ukraine and Russia. According to a report by the Norwegian Refugee Council, 5.9% of Moldova’s gross domestic product was wiped out because of the war, while inflation soared to a peak of 34% in the immediate aftermath — exceeding levels seen in Ukraine. Moldova’s current inflation hovers around 7%.
In a bid to show the extent to which Moldova has benefited from the EU, the Popescu has been traveling through villages across the country, taking photographs of EU-bankrolled projects, such as playgrounds, bike lanes, garbage collection trucks, and sanitation projects to post on his Facebook account.
Moldova's ultra-polarised election
Since becoming Moldova’s president in 2020, Sandu, a former World Bank economist, secured EU candidate status for her country, along with Ukraine, in 2022, and has since carried out major reforms that have positioned Moldova as a front runner to join the EU club.
But CEPA’s Cenusa noted that, with the country’s population “divided along geopolitical and political lines,” the prospect of a swift accession in 2028 “does not significantly impact the majority of the population.”
That’s why even Moldovans with pro-EU views fell short of supporting a key referendum on EU integration, he said, as many saw it as a “political opportunity for Maia Sandu’s re-election.”
Last year’s referendum on whether to enshrine in the constitution a path towards EU membership passed with a razor-thin margin of 50.35% to 49.65%, mainly down to the country’s pro-Western diaspora.
Still, Cenusa cautioned against the government’s “alarmist” view that a takeover by Russian sympathisers would leave Moldova entirely cut off from the West. Due to its strategic position between Romania and Ukraine, he argued, “whoever replaces the current government will need to continue dialogue with the EU.”
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