By Galina Korol and AFP | 2024-10-07

KYIV -- On October 20, Moldova will hold a presidential election as well as a referendum on the country's accession to the European Union (EU).

Moldovan citizens will have to decide whether they support the journey toward Europe that President Maia Sandu is promoting. The election and referendum will also decide whether decades of Russian manipulation succeed or fail.

Besides keeping about 1,000 troops in breakaway Transnistria since 1992 to foment a "frozen conflict," the Kremlin has repeatedly meddled in Moldovan politics.

Oligarch Ilan Shor for years led a pro-Russian political party bearing his own name. He was mayor of Orhei for five years but fled to Israel in 2019 before turning up in Russia in 2024. He faces a 15-year prison sentence in absentia for stealing $1 billion from three Moldovan banks.

His party is accused, among other misdeeds, of repeatedly transporting paid pro-Russian demonstrators to Chisinau and of giving hundreds of young Moldovans free trips to Russia to brainwash them.

""The [pro-Kremlin] protests in Moldova were organized by using a bribed and marginal part of the population," Ukrainian political scientist Valery Honcharuk told Caravanserai in 2023.

Those orchestrated demonstrations in Chisinau, which ran from September 2022 till June 2023 (when a court banned Shor's party), sometimes occurred every weekend.

Simultaneously, Russian-backed trolls in Moldova badger the elderly and poor about the supposed perils of aligning the country with the West.

'Enormous political significance'

"Both ... Sandu and the Action and Solidarity Party (PAS) advocate Moldova's integration with Europe. That means that the slated referendum will be a kind of simultaneous vote of confidence in ... Sandu and in her party," said Artem Fylypenko, a political scientist and former Ukrainian National Institute for Strategic Studies analyst.

"If ... people say 'yes,' then the position of pro-European political forces will be greatly strengthened ... It will be easier to refute the lies and propaganda coming from the Kremlin," Alexei Tulbure, former Moldovan ambassador and now director of the Oral History Institute of Moldova, told Kontur.

A pro-EU result in the referendum would entail adding a section to the Moldovan constitution entitled "European Integration."

"Accordingly, even if the alignment of forces in power changes later, a new referendum would be required to amend the constitution ... which is rather difficult technically," said Fylypenko.

Thus, the referendum has acquired enormous significance in analysts' eyes.

"The stakes are so high that everyone will try to the last and give his all to win Moldova over to his side," said Tulbure.

For the referendum to pass, 33% of voters must participate and half of them must vote in favor.

"All Moldovan referenda have failed from insufficient turnout ... That is why Russia is doing everything it can today to disrupt the referendum," said Fylypenko.

"Moscow doesn't just need Transnistria," he said. "It needs all of Moldova."

Russia still considers Moldova and Ukraine its "fiefdom," he said.

Baseless warnings and lavish promises

One tactic is spreading fear.

Russian trolls on social networks keep predicting calamity if Sandu's side wins, Valeriu Pasha, chairman of WatchDog.MD and a resident of Chisinau, told Kontur.

Another tactic is bribery.

The fugitive Shor, who now lives in Russia, is even promising free natural gas to Moldovans, according to a TASS article published on September 23.

"If we come out and say no and put the EU in its place, I give my word ... that starting from December 1 every individual will receive gas at his residence entirely free of charge," Shor said in a video message on Telegram.

"Without specifying the details, he also assured his audience that he would be able to attract $2 billion in investments in the republic's infrastructure and system of social benefits," TASS reported.

Shor's promises ring hollow in light of what the West and Russia comparatively can do to help other countries.

The EU is Moldova's largest trading partner. The EU and United States outrank all other donors and investors in Moldova.

Meanwhile, the Kremlin has squandered so many resources and incurred so many sanctions during its invasion of Ukraine that it can barely keep its own country going, let alone another.

Russia has drained its sovereign wealth fund of $58 billion since it began the full-scale invasion in February 2022, Reuters reported in February. That amount represents more than half the pre-invasion value.

That is the fund in which Russia ordinarily deposits oil revenue to fund pensions and infrastructure spending, Le Rubicon noted in April. The looting of that fund to cover basic domestic needs hardly suggests that Russia is ready to subsidize a foreign country.

Millions spent to sway Moldovans

The Kremlin has devoted considerable sums to its hybrid campaign of bribes and social network trolling because the chance to flip a country without resorting to arms is irresistible.

"We note this phenomenon of systematic bribery of voters in some regions. Above all, in Gagauzia ... and in some cities in the south and center of Moldova," said Pasha.

"For [Russian President Vladimir] Putin, the equivalent of $100-200 million a year is nothing compared to the money he is spending in just one day on the war in Ukraine," Pasha said.

Pasha described the various means of spreading cash among voters and influencers.

"They [the Russian authorities] are pumping this money into Moldova in every possible way: through cryptocurrency or through transfers via third parties --- they simply bring people to Moscow and give them $6,000-$8,000 in cash," he said.

Those recipients carry the dollars back to Moldova for distribution, he said. "Additionally, about 30,000-40,000 people in Moldova receive €100 a month on Russian payment cards. This money is being cashed in Transnistria, Türkiye or Russia itself. Plus, there is the funding for hundreds of Telegram channels, TikTokers, YouTubers, various political commentators and so on -- heaps of money are going into this."

Cracking down

However, Moldovan police are aware of the misbehavior. They raided 25 locations October 3 after discovering that at least $15 million was transferred from Russia to Moldovan citizens in September alone in an "unprecedented" effort to tamper with the presidential elections, AFP reported.

More than 100,000 Moldovans with voting rights were thought to be involved in the vote-buying scheme, Cernauteanu said. The country has 2.6 million inhabitants.

"Russia is trying to win in Moldova without weapons, without bombs, without missiles, without combat," said Tulbure.

However, even though Russia has done everything to stop Moldova from locking in its European course, polls of Moldovan citizens are leading to optimistic predictions.

In a poll published last week, more than 63.2% of the 1,021 Moldovan respondents supported EU accession, WatchDog.MD reported.