Buying voters, calling in bomb threats and paying protesters to oppose police are tactics authorities say the Kremlin adopted to prevent Moldova's upcoming elections.
Small ex-Soviet states are embroiled in warring pro-Russian and pro-European forces ahead of the October 20 vote for a new president and a referendum on European Union (EU) membership.
EU membership would deepen Moldova's ties with the West – and is a direct attempt to ward off Russian influence.
Russia wants to keep Eastern European countries, such as Moldova and Georgia, that were once part of the Soviet Union. and Ukraine — Leaving the EU Historically, a vote to join the European Union often precedes a vote to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the Cold War-era alliance designed to combat Russia.
The vote comes as some call on NATO and the EU to grant membership to war-torn Ukraine – a move seen by others as a risky provocation by the Russian president. Vladimir Putin.
Maia Sandu, the current president of Moldova and candidate in the upcoming presidential elections, center, held a rally. (Reuters/Vladislav Kulyomza/File)
Moldovan authorities have accused a complex network of Russian agents of vote buying, money laundering and illegal financing to shape the results of presidential elections and EU membership referendums.
Since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, Moldova has oscillated between pro-Western and pro-Russian leadership under his leadership.
And earlier this year, the United States pledged $136 million to Moldova, with a population of about 3 million, to reduce its dependence on Russian energy and combat Russian paranoia.
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The head of the national police, Viorel Cernauteanu, said that more than 130,000 Moldovans – or 5% of the country's voters – were bribed by a Russian-run network to vote against the referendum and in favor of Russia-friendly candidates, in what he said. called it “unprecedented, unprecedented.” attack.”
“We found massive cases of financing and corruption aimed at disrupting the electoral process in Moldova,” Cernauteanu told journalists.
The issue has attracted the attention of U.S. politicians: Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Mo., wrote a letter Thursday to the CEOs of Meta, Alphabet and Google urging them to commit resources to combat confusion. In Moldova.
Women hold a Moldovan flag during a demonstration to support a European path for the country in Chisinau, Moldova. (Reuters/Vladislav Kulyomza)
He said that in September alone, around $15 million was transferred to accounts opened with Russia's Promsvyazbank.
Ilan Shor, a pro-Russian oligarch living in exile, recently posted on Telegram offering to pay people to vote “no” in the referendum. Shor, who was convicted last year in a scandal involving the theft of $1 billion from a Moldovan bank, is believed to be linked to a wider network of Russian state actors seeking to keep the country out of the European Union.
Meanwhile, current President Maia Sandu portrayed the October 20 election as a test of her pro-European policy. Sandu, who is seeking a second term, has long accused Moscow of trying to overthrow his government, an accusation Moscow denies.
Writing on his own Telegram channel, Shor said Moldova under Sandu “has become a police state forever”, referring to the arrest of five of his supporters by prosecutors this week on charges of illegally financing political parties.
Moldova, which has a Romanian-speaking majority and a Russian-speaking minority, has alternated between pro-Russian and pro-Western governments since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.
“Moldova has embarked on a journey of reform, of change, so we have aspirations to join the EU,” Anton Lungu, deputy head of Moldova's mission in the United States, told Fox News Digital, adding that he supports the referendum. “Therefore, we must be aware of the Soviet legacy and the interest in maintaining spheres of influence. This harmful influence is expected to continue until election day.”
The country has Russian prosecutors It is said that training is being given How to antagonize and incite police to use agents such as tear gas to create anxiety and violent clashes before elections.
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Shore and his network paid protesters up to $100 a night to sleep in protest camps. Fake bomb threats and cyberattacks against schools and government buildings aim to create “controlled chaos,” according to Rebecca Koffler, a former senior official at the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). “Putin’s Handbook”
Sandu is fighting for re-election as a pro-Western politician.
In September, Moldovan police said they arrested two men who were vandalizing government buildings. They then discovered that the pair were part of a group of 20 young people who were sent to Moscow for training on how to incite police during demonstrations and other volatile activities, and were paid more than $5,000 each to vandalize government buildings.
Koffler compared Russia's influence to the U.S.'s “Monroe Doctrine” — an 1823 doctrine that warned European countries against meddling in Western Hemisphere affairs. Now applied to adversaries such as Russia and China, the doctrine was symbolically invoked in 1962 when the Soviet Union began building missile launch sites in Cuba.
“Russia has for centuries depended on a strategic buffer zone, or strategic security perimeter, of which the former Soviet states of Ukraine and Moldova are a part,” he said.
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“With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, this strategic security perimeter was reduced, particularly the distance between NATO, Moscow and Saint Petersburg,” said Koffler, referring to Russia's capital and second-largest city. Saint Petersburg is just 160 kilometers from the border with Finland – a NATO country.
Finland and Sweden applied to join NATO shortly after the outbreak of war in Ukraine and joined the alliance in 2023.
Some observers believe that NATO's expansion to Russia's borders and growing US influence among Eastern European states have threatened Putin and led him to invade Ukraine in 2022. Others believe he had long-standing regional ambitions to restore the Soviet Union and could not fail to do so. the attacker
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Russia is known to follow the Gerasimov Doctrine, led by high-ranking Russian general Valery Gerasimov, which advocates secretly hacking enemy societies and sowing chaos, rather than attacking through direct force.
Russia-aligned intervention in Moldova would suit this form of shadow puppetry to control outcomes.
“The 'rules of war' themselves have changed. The role of non-military means in achieving political and strategic objectives has increased and, in many cases, they have surpassed the power of weapons in their effectiveness… All this is complemented by military means. Meaning of secret character”, Gerasimov wrote in the Russian trade newspaper “Military-Industrial Courier”.
Reuters contributed to this report.
