By Galina Korol and AFP | 2024-08-15

CHISINAU -- Russia last week expelled a Moldovan diplomat in a tit-for-tat move after Chisinau expelled a Russian diplomat in an espionage scandal.

Tensions between Moscow and ex-Soviet pro-European Union Moldova are tense, as Russia backs separatists in the breakaway region of Transnistria and regularly criticizes Moldova's attempts to move closer to the West.

Russia's Foreign Ministry on August 6 said it summoned Moldova's top envoy "to lodge a strong protest against the ongoing unfriendly steps" being taken by Chisinau towards Russia.

A note to potential spies

At the beginning of the month, Moldova found itself reeling from a major scandal related to treason and espionage, just one year after another eruption.

Moldova's Foreign Ministry on August 1 delivered a note to Oleg Vasnetsov, the Russian ambassador to Moldova, and told him that it had declared one embassy staffer persona non grata.

"The Moldovan authorities made the decision after taking concrete steps and obtaining information and evidence that a Russian diplomat was conducting activities incompatible with diplomatic status on the territory of Moldova," the ministry said.

As a result, Moldova expelled a Russian deputy military attaché.

Countries generally tolerate the known intelligence roles of military attachés and embassy security officers, Viktor Yahun, a former deputy director of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) and a reservist major general, told Kontur.

However, in the past few years, Russian military attachés have been repeatedly expelled from European countries for committing overt espionage.

Raids in parliament

Before the Foreign Ministry note, Moldova's Intelligence and Security Service and the Prosecutor's Office for Combating Organized Crime and Special Cases conducted searches in Moldova's parliament building July 31.

That day, prosecutors announced that they had detained two officials who were suspected of treason. Authorities suspect the now-expelled Russian deputy military attaché of recruiting them.

"Both of them had access to very important information," said Andrei Curăraru of the WatchDog.MD Community, a Chisinau-based analyst on European integration and the fight against corruption.

"Based on what we can glean from open-source information, there was a Border Police employee who worked in the Chisinau airport," he told Kontur.

This asset "could have facilitated a potential rotation of [Russian] troops in Transnistria that they're trying to do through our airport [in Chisinau]."

"He may have been able to arrange things so that a search wasn't very thorough, or he may have arranged a green channel for someone who would transport documents or prohibited equipment, weapons and so on," Curăraru said.

This person's identity has not been disclosed.

The second person suspected of treason is a veteran politician.

According to media reports, it is Ion Creangă, director of the Legal Department of parliament. He was allegedly caught red-handed while passing information to Russian embassy personnel.

Creangă has been placed under detention pending trial for 30 days. The ruling on this detention came on August 2 from a Chisinau court after it examined a motion by the prosecutor.

"He worked for more than 30 years in parliament. He had the highest level of access to a range of classified documents," Curăraru said.

"So the result is that he may have had influence on certain issues and lobbied on topics ranging from energy security -- which here was closely tied to Russia's interests -- to how Moldova's security strategy was drawn up, and so on."

Moldovan intelligence had both treason suspects under surveillance for a year and a half, he said.

"This is just the beginning, and the intelligence agencies will expose another network of these agents," Curăraru predicted, adding that the officials were unlikely to be working alone.

The case likely is connected to the mass expulsion of Russian embassy personnel in Chisinau in 2023.

45 embassy staff kicked out

On July 26, 2023, the Moldovan Foreign Ministry informed the Russian ambassador of the imminent expulsion of 45 Russian embassy staffers and diplomats.

The impetus was an investigation by The Insider, an independent Russia-focused news outlet, raising suspicions that the Russian embassy was spying in Moldova.

"Year after year, the number of dishes and transmitting devices on the rooftop of the Russian embassy in Chisinau keeps growing, accompanied by the regular appearance of enigmatic figures," The Insider reported July 24, 2023.

"This rooftop activity becomes particularly noticeable ahead of presidential or parliamentary elections, as well as during the visits of foreign delegations to Moldova."

Moldovan President Maia Sandu responded to this investigation when it was published, calling into question the interference of Russian diplomats in Moldova's domestic policy.

"It was unclear what jobs the vast majority of the people [at the embassy] were doing," Yahun said.

Consequently, the Moldovan government reduced the number of accredited personnel at the Russian embassy.

Yahun noted the strategic location of the embassy.

It "is basically located across the street from the main office of the Moldovan Intelligence and Security Service," he said.

In modestly sized Chisinau, the embassy also stands near the "residences of the president, prime minister and others," Yahun said.

However, even after this mass expulsion, the Russian embassy still has plenty of troublemakers, Curăraru said.

"Ten diplomats and 15 technical employees stayed in Moldova," he said. "I don't completely understand why we need to have so many potential spies here."

"The Russians' goal has been and will continue to be to keep all the republics of the former Soviet Union under their control and to use these locations ... for espionage," Ivan Stupak, a former SBU officer and an analyst at the Ukrainian Institute for the Future, told Kontur.

"Take as an example Belarus: that's a successful staging ground for spying on the Baltic countries and Poland," he said. "Moldova is a staging ground that extends to Romania, which is a NATO country, where it's also important for [the Russians] to spy."