CHIȘINĂU, Moldova—Walking through the sleepy Sunday streets of this Eastern European capital could easily belie the fact that the country was holding its most consequential election in decades.
Despite the spectre of unprecedented Russian meddling, there were no signs of political upheaval or violence. But Moldovans did deal Moscow a grievous blow by overwhelmingly casting their ballots in favour of a future in the European Union — bolstering the bloc just as it faces mounting threats from Moscow.
Moldovan President Maia Sandu’s pro-EU ruling party gained the upper hand in Sunday’s parliamentary elections, reaffirming the country’s resolve to join the EU and break away from the Kremlin’s sphere of influence.
The Party of Action and Solidarity (PAS), which had campaigned as the only political party fighting for European integration, clinched a decisive victory by garnering more than 50% of the vote. Its main rival, the Russia-friendly Patriotic Electoral Bloc (PEB), trailed behind with 24%.
The result was anything but certain, with polls showing PEB taking a narrow lead in the days before Sunday’s vote. But PAS is now set to hold an absolute majority of 55 out of 101 seats in parliament, allowing Sandu’s party to govern without forming a coalition.
A former World Bank economist, Sandu was first elected in 2020. Since then, she secured EU candidate status for her country in 2022, along with neighbouring Ukraine, and carried out major reforms that have positioned Moldova as a front runner to join the Brussels club.
The victory of Sandu’s PAS comes as Moldova, a tiny country tucked between Romania and Ukraine, has faced a nearly €300 million interference campaign by Russia, according to estimates by government officials. In the run-up to the elections, Sandu had warned that a victory by pro-Russian forces would translate into soaring insecurity for Ukraine, freezing accession talks for Chișinău.
“The elections showed a very high level of attempted meddling,” Balazs Jarabik, a political analyst and former Slovakian diplomat, told The Parliament. "The persistence of Russian tactics — financing, media manipulation, diaspora targeting — underscores that these methods are adaptable and could be replicated elsewhere," he added.
Pushing back on Russian meddling
From covertly buying votes and orchestrating elaborate pyramid schemes to flooding social media with fake news and enlisting Orthodox priests as tools of propaganda, Moldovan government insiders suspect Russia to have dramatically expanded its budget to influence the vote.
Moscow’s aim, according to the government, was to install a Russia-friendly administration that would have allowed the Kremlin to leverage the country’s infrastructure to infiltrate Ukraine — allowing Russian President Vladimir Putin to make new military advances in its three-year war of aggression there.
Sunday’s vote took place against the backdrop of a cyberattack on the electoral system and a series of hoax bomb alerts in Moldovan embassies across the EU, where the country’s pro-European diaspora was queuing to vote.
European leaders, who were closely monitoring the run-up to the elections, saw Russia’s unprecedented interference as a case study in how far the Kremlin was willing to go to destabilise the bloc’s eastern flank and thwart its plans to expand east.
And that’s exactly what’s made Moldova’s pro-European victory a “lesson for all of Europe on how to defeat Russian interference,” Siegfried Mureșan, a Romanian lawmaker who chairs the European Parliament’s delegation in charge of Moldovan relations, wrote on X. “Moldova remains firmly anchored on the pro-European path.”
After a Russian disinformation campaign last year was seen to have undermined a pivotal referendum on EU accession — it ended up passing only with a razor-thin margin — Sandu’s government unleashed a crackdown against Russia’s hybrid warfare attempts.
To curb vote buying — one of the most well-documented tactics employed by Russia, especially in Russian-speaking regions at the border with the breakaway state of Transnistria — the government in Chișinău introduced hefty penalties for anyone caught selling their vote. And last month, it blocked up to 443 TikTok accounts accused of spreading disinformation.
Moldova’s Central Electoral Commission also banned two pro-Russian parties just a day before the vote, a move critics called undemocratic.
Brussels puts its weight behind Sandu
Hundreds of kilometres from Chișinău, top EU officials breathed a sigh of relief as preliminary results began to roll in on Sunday night.
“Today, the strength of Moldova’s democracy resonates far beyond its borders. Now the mission starts to unite Moldovans on their journey to the EU,” said Marta Kos, the EU’s commissioner for enlargement, who visited the country several times and directly backed Sandu.
With war raging in Ukraine and the Kremlin intensifying its hybrid provocations against Europe’s NATO members, the EU openly threw its weight behind PAS. The show of support culminated in a visit to Chișinău last month by a contingent of high-profile European heads of state — namely French President Emmanuel Macron, Germany’s Friedrich Merz, and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk.
But even with that support, coupled with Sandu’s victory, Moldova faces diplomatic hurdles in its quest to join the EU. Hungary and Slovakia, both close to the Kremlin, have repeatedly blocked Moldova's accession bid because it’s bundled to that of Ukraine. In an effort to overcome the stalemate, European Council President Antonio Costa will reportedly propose ditching the tenant of unanimity among members state in the EU enlargement process at an informal leaders’ summit in Copenhagen on Wednesday.
Still, that wouldn’t address another big hurdle to Moldova’s accession: Transnistria. The region, which is dominated by Russian separatists, unofficially broke away from Moldova in 1990 with Moscow’s support. Roughly 1,500 Russian troops are currently stationed there, and the region contains the second largest weapons’ stockpile from the former Soviet Union, making it unlikely that Putin would relinquish control anytime soon.
A potential workaround could consist of a two-phase accession process, that would leave the Russian separatist region behind, at least initially — a scenario that President Sandu endorsed at a press conference on Monday.
The risk of a one-party system in Moldova?
PAS was able to pull off a victory by presenting the vote as a civilisational choice between the East and the West, according to Adrian Balutel, Sandu’s chief of staff. But critics argue that framing has come at the cost of deepening the country’s polarisation.
“The ruling party has conducted a campaign based on fear,” said Igor Munteanu, a political analyst and former Moldovan ambassador who ran in this year’s elections for Coalition for Unity and Well-Being (CUB), a pro-Western party that failed to reach the 4% threshold. He accused PAS of dismissing any legitimate criticism as simply pro-Russian. “They won, but at the expense of a large divide and polarisation in the Moldovan society.”
Munteanu argued that PAS’s overwhelming dominance could ultimately undermine the very democracy it seeks to strengthen.
“I don’t believe that this big win will increase the accountability of the government and improve the governance of the government,” he said of PAS gaining an absolute majority. “Moldova doesn’t need a one-party system like in the Soviet Union.”
Jarabik, the political analyst, echoed Munteanu’s criticism. “The ruling party’s strategy of polarisation and reliance on diaspora votes worked again — just as in 2024,” he said, even as the party has failed to address underlying economic and social concerns.
Moldova’s economic crisis
Far from the corridors of power, ordinary Moldovans are grappling with a deepening cost-of-living crisis.
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 of Russia’s invasion — exceeding levels seen in Ukraine. Moldova’s current inflation level hovers around 7%. .
Alexandra, a pensioner who continues to work as a fruit-and-vegetable vendor in Chișinău, was still undecided about which party to vote for a day ahead of the elections — despite being entirely in favour of joining the EU.
“There’s no looking back,” she told The Parliament, referencing Moldova’s Soviet past. The vendor, whose daughter lives abroad in Italy, simply would like to see Moldova offer enough economic opportunities to allow young people to maintain livelihoods in the country.
Moldova’s scant economic growth has resulted in a continued exodus of young Moldovans leaving to seek a better life elsewhere. In 2024, over 32,000 citizens were estimated to have emigrated, according to the National Bureau of Statistics, equivalent to roughly 1% of the country’s 2.4 million population.
The economic frustration “highlights a blind spot,” argued Jarabik. “Both Chișinău and Brussels need to address voters’ economic and social frustrations more directly,” he said.
Otherwise, he warned, Russia’s “interference narratives will continue to resonate, even if they fail to alter the strategic direction of the country.”
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