Romania’s defense ministry has warned that dozens of social-media posts claiming Bucharest has been massing troops and military equipment at its border with Moldova are part of „a fake news” campaign launched by the Kremlin since it invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
„We remind everyone that the accuracy of such sensationalist and panicky information can best be verified by consulting official sources,” the ministry said in a post on Facebook on Tuesday.
Moldova lies between EU- and NATO-member Romania and Ukraine, with which it shares a 1,200-kilometer border.
Russia has more than 1,000 troops in Moldova’s pro-Russian separatist region of Trans-Dniester which does not share a border with Romania .
Russia has falsely claimed that Ukraine is planning to invade Trans-Dniester, raising suspicions that Moscow is looking for a pretext to annex the separatist region, as it did with Ukraine’s Crimea in 2014.
Moldova’s pro-Western President Maia Sandu and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy have warned that Moscow is planning destabilizing actions inside the country to justify a Russian invasion from Trans-Dniester that could transform Moldova into a launch pad for Russian attacks on Ukraine.
A Twitter account called Geoinsider that bears the site’s „verified” blue check mark published on February 26 a photo allegedly depicting Romanian troops moving toward the Moldovan border.
The caption of the photo read, „Romania deployed antiaircraft systems to the border with Moldova. Romanian military tanks and armored vehicles have also been deployed at the border.”
It was deleted but before that, it was reposted several hundred times by dozens of Twitter accounts. Some even claimed that Romanian troops had already crossed into Moldova.
