PSCRP-BESA Reports No 161 (October 26, 2025)
The ruling Party of Action and Solidarity (PAS) won the parliamentary elections held in Moldova on September 28, gaining an absolute majority with 50.2% of the vote and 55 out of 101 seats in parliament. Thus, for at least the next three years, until the end of the presidential term of PAS founder Maia Sandu, the country is likely to maintain its pro-European course.
However, the leadership of the pro-European forces remains unstable. Last year, Sandu was able to win the presidential election only thanks to votes from the diaspora. In the parliamentary elections, PAS lost four seats, and without the votes of Moldovans living abroad, it would not have won an absolute majority.
The fundamental divide in values that exists within Moldovan society is exacerbated, on the one hand, by Russia’s overt interference in the country’s politics and, on the other, by the authorities’ apparent abuse of administrative power to influence the elections.
Russian interference
The elections became an arena for unprecedented Russian interference aimed at reversing the country’s pro-Western course and establishing a pro-Russian government.
In her address to the nation, Sandu stated that the Kremlin was spending “hundreds of millions of euros” to bribe voters, spread disinformation online, and recruit provocateurs to create “chaos, violence, and fear.” Moldovan Prime Minister Dorin Recean also spoke about a “hybrid war,” calling the election “the last battle for the future of our country.”
According to Bloomberg, the plan to interfere in the elections was developed back in the spring, with the Kremlin coordinating operations. The plan involved engaging Moldovan citizens voting abroad, including in the European Union and Russia, in a large-scale information campaign. The campaign sought to spread disinformation, disseminate fabricated incriminating material, and provoke protests. Events show that Russia indeed acted “according to plan.”
International observers from the OSCE also confirmed Russian interference aimed at significantly altering the election results.
One of Russia’s strategies was to bribe voters—an operation carried out through Ilan Shor, an oligarch convicted of fraud in Moldova and living in Moscow, along with individuals and entities associated with him.
Throughout the year, Russia also instigated more than 1,000 cyberattacks on Moldova’s state infrastructure, including election-related resources and government services.
A large-scale disinformation campaign on the internet became another tool of Russian influence. A particularly prominent role was played by the so-called “Matryoshka”—a pro-Russian network of bots spreading fake media content on social networks, including fabricated videos, staged photos, screenshots of non-existent publications, websites created solely for propaganda purposes that masquerade as legitimate outlets, opinions of individuals posing as experts when they are not, etc. According to analysts, Matryoshka’s activity during the Moldovan parliamentary elections exceeded its total efforts to interfere in the 2024–2025 elections in the US, Germany, and Poland.
In addition to Matryoshka, Russia financed a network of accounts linked to Ilan Shor. The BBC managed to infiltrate this “troll factory.” According to the American Digital Forensic Research Lab, since the beginning of the year, videos created by this network on TikTok have garnered 55 million views and more than 2.2 million likes.
Pro-Russian propaganda went as far as employing Orthodox priests, according to Sandu’s spokesperson. Moscow sponsored the pilgrimage trips to Russia, Serbia, and Jerusalem, and paid priests to create Telegram channels criticizing Chisinau’s pro-European stance. According to information from Andrei Kuraev, a former protodeacon of the Russian Orthodox Church and theologian, the Moscow Patriarchate called Moldovan priests across Europe, offering assistance to parishes and urging them to “make it before the elections.”
Intimidation was another tactic employed. Pro-Russian sources claimed that if PAS won, it would “impose” an “LGBT agenda” on citizens, while Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service alleged that the European Union was preparing to “occupy” Moldova and deploy NATO troops on its borders. On election day, polling stations in Belgium, Italy, Romania, the US, and Spain—where voters are known to be pro-Western—received false bomb threats.
According to Moldovan authorities, Russia had developed plans to provoke mass unrest during the elections. A few days before the vote, 74 people suspected of undergoing specialized training were detained. It is alleged that they were trained to break through police cordons, resist arrest, and use batons, handcuffs, and even firearms. Some were trained in Serbia by instructors linked to Russian military intelligence (GRU). Serbian authorities confirmed this information, stating that 150–170 citizens of Moldova and Romania underwent such training during the summer. Two organizers of the camps were detained.
Problematic elections
Moldova’s Central Election Commission (CEC) stated that voting went smoothly without major incidents but reported 236 violations. The independent observer mission Promo-LEX reported 344 violations, including photographing ballots, removing them from polling stations, illegal campaigning, transporting voters to polling stations, unauthorized filming, attempted bribery, etc. It is not specified who benefited from these violations, but Promo-LEX noted an incident of organized voting in Belarus by about 50 people who had presumably arrived from Russia’s Kursk Oblast.
The pro-Russian Patriotic Bloc, in turn, accused the authorities of “hundreds of violations,” but has yet to provide documentary evidence.
However, there is little doubt that the Moldovan authorities used institutional leverage.
Shortly before the elections, CEC barred two pro-Russian parties from the Patriotic Bloc: Heart of Moldova, a week before the election, and Great Moldova, literally on the eve of the vote. They were accused of receiving illegal funding, bribing voters, and maintaining ties with Ilan Shor’s previously banned party.
Although the charges appear serious, their compliance with the rule of law is questionable. In the case of Heart of Moldova, the ban is at least based on a Chisinau Court of Appeal ruling restricting the party’s activities for 12 months. However, this ruling was only a precautionary measure taken at the request of the Ministry of Justice after searches of party members’ homes. The removal of Great Moldova was based solely on suspicions from the security services.
Even more significant—because they are evidently true—are the complaints about the reduced number of polling stations in areas with predominantly pro-Russian electorates. For instance, only two polling stations were set up in Russia, both in Moscow, and only one in Belarus. In unrecognized Transnistria, there were 12 polling stations—three times fewer than in the previous parliamentary elections. This can only be seen as a deliberate attempt to prevent opposition supporters from voting.
In this sense, the elections in Moldova are comparable to the recent presidential elections in Romania, which excluded the leading pro-Russian nationalist candidate, Calin Georgescu, from participation. This led to sharp criticism not only from Eurosceptics directly or indirectly linked to the Kremlin but also from figures such as US Vice President Jay D. Vance.
Other populist politicians in Europe are also subject to legally questionable persecution, including Marine Le Pen in France and members of Germany’s Alternative for Germany.
The dilemma of democracies
Under nearly undisguised Russian pressure, European ruling circles have found themselves in a political trap that recalls Nietzsche’s well-known phrase: “He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster.” To defeat Putin and prevent the rise of pro-Kremlin regimes, they are forced to use the very measures—albeit on a smaller scale—that have long been perfected in Russia, where any opposition has been completely destroyed.
It would be naive to think that the Russian threat is merely a pretext for curtailing democratic freedoms. It is very real, and perhaps the regular saber-rattling and almost daily incursions of Russian drones and aircraft into NATO airspace are not the most dangerous aspect—at least for now, when Russia lacks the military capability to wage war on two fronts.
But post-Soviet and post-communist countries are falling under Russian influence one after another. The regimes in Georgia, Serbia, the Republika Srpska (part of Bosnia and Herzegovina), Hungary, and Slovakia—not to mention Belarus—are openly pro-Russian. Romania, Bulgaria, and Moldova are teetering on the edge. Even Poland and the Czech Republic, once staunchly “hawkish” toward Russia (in the Czech Republic, the parliamentary elections held on October 2–3 were won by the party of former Prime Minister Andrej Babiš, who can hardly be called pro-Russian, but certainly “less anti-Russian”), are shifting toward a more moderate rhetoric.
While the process is moving in the opposite direction in Armenia and Azerbaijan, it remains worrying—especially considering the map displayed in the office of Russian Chief of General Staff Valery Gerasimov. It should not be dismissed as yet another example of the stylistic brashness typical of Russian leaders, but instead as a serious statement of ambition, or even a plan.
The map shows five Ukrainian regions that Russia has declared annexed within their administrative borders, including territories not actually under its control. It also designates the Mykolaiv and Odesa regions as Russian territory. In other words, if the map is to be believed, Russia envisions a “bridge” of occupied Ukrainian land extending to Moldova—where it already has political footholds in Transnistria and Gagauzia—and into Romania.
Should the worst-case scenario unfold, it cannot be ruled out that Russia could gain control over a large part of Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe.
In the face of this threat, the questionable measures taken by governments under pressure are understandable—but not justifiable. Moreover, the standoff with Russia is doomed to fail if it devolves into a “battle of political strategists.” (Recall Russia’s own 1996 presidential elections, when Yeltsin’s camp prevented a Communist victory, only for far more dangerous forces to seize power a few years later.) The problem lies not only in voter frustration and the erosion of social trust—the foundations of democracy—but also in the fact that “the hand of Moscow” is not the only, or even the main, reason for growing populist and Eurosceptic sentiment.
In Moldova, for example, the problems of mass poverty persist against the backdrop of high inflation, primarily on consumer goods, mass emigration, and demographic decline (over three decades of independence, the country’s population has fallen from 4.3 to 2.4 million people), as well as corruption, low levels of education, and poor labor productivity.
If Moldova fails to use the “credit of time” gained after the presidential and parliamentary elections to achieve tangible progress in improving the daily lives of its citizens, this political cycle may well be the last for pro-European politicians and parties.