The arsenal used by a giant country like Russia to block the European and Euro-Atlantic path of a small state like the Republic of Moldova, and to force it back into the infamous orbit of the Kremlin, characterized by poverty, authoritarianism and losing independence is phenomenal.
The insistence with which Moscow pursues this imperialist objective across the Prut over many years is hard to believe, given that Putin’s regime has proved itself fundamentally incapable and with no appetite for getting its own people out of misery.
Moscow’s hybrid war with Chisinau contains all these elements:
- Organization and financing of violent street actions
- Vote buying
- Endless pumping of pro-Russian propaganda
- Buying off and being “in touch” by politicians and local officials
- Ultra-aggressive espionage
- Financing of so-called civic parties and organizations
- Systematic denigration of the Moldovan state corroborated with open threats, uttered from the highest level in Moscow, even with armed aggression – either through references to the separatist space in Transnistria, or through parallels with the post-2014 and especially post-2022 fate of Ukraine
Revelations by the Moldovan authorities, officials and public entities from European states, as well as investigations by the local and international press have constantly warned, especially after the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, that Russia spends, just to recapture the Republic of Moldova, sums of money to the tune of one or perhaps even several percent of Moldova’s GDP.
We are talking about hundreds of millions of euros that Moscow ‘burned’ for this, at a time when the ordinary Russian is sick, has a deficit of education, a deficit of culture, and a deficit of connection to the rest of the world.
And, of course, the ordinary Russian is cracking on the front in Ukraine at levels not seen since World War II.
And the average Russian is cracking there, on the “inaugurated” front on February 24, 2022, not only because of the heroism and progress in preparation made by the Ukrainian military, but also because of the horrible limits of the Russian economy, because of the endemic corruption in Russia, because of the overall rottenness of an entire system – the system imposed and strengthened by the Putin regime in its 25 years of absolutist power.
But no less phenomenal and no less fantastic is the tenacity with which the pro-European authorities in Chisinau are fighting 24/24 to counter the fierce Russian offensive.
As no less extraordinary were the sense of history and the instinct of self-preservation proven in the elections of the last five years by the majority of Moldovan voters.
Regardless of what the courage, lucidity and skills of the incumbent authorities in Chisinau can produce, in the end it is invariably vital the vote of the citizens across the Prut (Eds: river which divides Romania and Moldova) – whether it is about the millions left in the country, or about the millions who live and work outside it.
It was like this in the autumn of 2024, on the occasion of the presidential elections and the referendum for EU accession, and it will not be otherwise in the autumn of 2025, on the occasion of the legislative elections that will be played over the weekend.
“Sovereignty, independence, integrity and our European future” – are exactly what will be on everyone’s table on Sunday, on the day of the vote, as President Maia Sandu herself recently and coherently underlined in Chisinau.
And as Sandu had warned a few days earlier, in the European Parliament, for the rest of the countries on the continent, it will be nothing less than “a threat to Europe’s eastern border”, in case Putin’s maneuvers are successful at the Moldovan polls.
Stuck for over three and a half years on the armed front in Ukraine (with immeasurable costs, stolen by the Kremlin from the mouth of their own country’s development), the Russians are desperately seeking to reconfigure their ways out of the impasse through the hybrid front opened in the Republic of Moldova.
This is the substance of Moscow’s efforts to hijack the electoral process organized by Chisinau, this is the meaning of the judicial operations carried out in recent days by the Moldovan authorities, nothing less than that is not up to the voters from across the Prut, who will go to the polls on Sunday.
And as far as we are concerned, here in Romania, the pro-Russian far right is similar, its parties are the most profoundly anti-Romanian in Romania. The anti-Romanian parties are AUR, SOS, POT and ex-presidential candidate Călin Georgescu.
A Russian outpost across the Prut will be a historic disaster on the other side of the Prut (Eds: Romania) as well.
Russian-funded disinformation network exposed by BBC in Moldova ahead of crucial Sept. 28 elections
