Over the next week, Moldova and Georgia will face their 1947 moment. In advance of elections in Moldova on Sunday and in Georgia on October 26, Russia is working to maneuver the two former Soviet republics back into Moscow’s embrace.
Between 1945 and 1948, the Kremlin used fraud, front groups, and Red Army soldiers to bring seven Central European nations under Soviet rule. This time, the Kremlin is using fraud and front groups to block Moldova and Georgia’s European aspirations. Waiting in the wings are 1,300 Russian soldiers stationed in Moldova’s breakaway Transnistria region and 10,000 Russian soldiers in Georgia’s Abkhazia and South Ossetia regions.
Preying on voters’ minds is the devastation Russia is wreaking on a third westward looking former Soviet republic — Ukraine. In Georgia, the pro-Russian Georgian Dream party is airing TV ads that contrast destroyed Ukrainian cities with peaceful Georgian ones. An announcer implores: “No to war. Choose peace.” In a sign of the times, party founder Bidzina Ivanishvili proposes that, after the election, Georgian authorities should “apologize” to the Kremlin for provoking Russia to invade in 2008.
With both countries facing forks in the East-West road, eyes first focus on Moldova. On Sunday’s ballot are a second, 4-year term for President Maia Sandu and a vote on Moldova joining the European Union. A graduate of Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, Ms. Sandu leads the pro-western forces of this nation of 2.5 million people.
“Every generation has its mission. Those before us fought for freedom, their language, self-determination … and risked losing their jobs or being arrested,” the 52-year-old president told her supporters, harking back to the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic. “For our generation of democracy, it is integrating Moldova into the broad European family of lasting peace and prosperity.”
Moldova is sandwiched between Ukraine and Romania, a member of the North Atlantic Treaty. The Maryland-sized, landlocked nation is valued in the West as strategic to blocking Russia’s westward march. In May, Secretary Blinken visited Moldova and announced $135 million in aid for energy security and counter-disinformation.
In June, formal talks started with Moldova about joining the European Union. France, Germany, and Poland quickly voiced “unwavering and continuous support for Moldova” joining the 27-member group by the end of this decade.
“If Ukraine falls, Moldova is the next country in line,”sGermany’s foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, warned last month at a meeting of six European foreign ministers at Moldova’s capital, Chisinau. Ukraine’s port of Odessa is only a 3-hour drive east of Chisinau.
Last week, it was the turn of the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, to fly to Chisinau to meet Ms. Sandu and urge Moldovans to vote in the plebiscite. She pledged $2 billion in European support for Moldova. Earmarked for railways and energy efficiency, the aid is designed to double Moldova’s economy in three years.
“There’s a big milestone ahead for the people of Moldova…I encourage Moldovans to use their vote and express their free choice,” Ms. von der Leyen told reporters, referring to the vote on enshrining EU membership as a “strategic goal” in Moldova’s constitution. “It is for you, the Moldovans, to decide. It is your sovereign choice what to do with your country and no one can interfere.”
Interference from Russia is clear. After Moldovan authorities accused fugitive oligarch Ilan Shor of investing $15 million into buying “No” votes for the EU campaign, he sneered from Moscow that it is more than $15 million. In a Telegram post two weeks ago, he offered the equivalent of $29 to any voters who signed up for his anti-EU campaign. Voters, he said, would get more money if they cast “No” ballots in the referendum.
The president’s office estimates that Russia has invested $100 million to try to get the “No” vote to prevail this Sunday. The chief of the national police, Viorel Cernăuțanu, accuses Shor of using a “mafia-style” voter-buying scheme to bribe 130,000 Moldovans to vote against joining the EU referendum and in favor of Russia-friendly presidential candidates.
Tel Aviv-born Shor fled Moldova five years ago after he was convicted for his role in the theft of $1 billion from three Moldovan banks. Despite a 15-year jail sentence for what was called “Moldova’s theft of the century,” the fugitive financier was in May granted Russian citizenship. He is sanctioned by America and the European Union.
“They are using propaganda to spread lies about the European Union and frighten people with all sorts of tall tales,” Ms. Sandu’s re-election campaign chief Andrei Spinu wrote on Telegram. “Let’s not believe thieves, fugitives and bandits.”
Yesterday, Moldovan prosecutor Victor Furtuna told reporters last Shor flew 300 young men to Moscow last summer to train in sowing election “chaos” — protests, voting table disruptions, fake bomb threats, and even seizures of government buildings. Each man was reportedly paid $5,000. In the first actions, men splashed yellow and red paint — the colors of Ms. Sandu’s party — across the facades of the Supreme Court, the state broadcasting building and two other government buildings.
Last week, Meta Platforms said it had removed from Facebook and Instagram a dozen fictitious, Russian-language news brands aimed at Russian speakers in Moldova. Hours earlier, Senator Cardin, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, sent a letter to the chief executives of Meta, Alphabet, and Google urging them to combat disinformation in Moldova. Separately, Moldova’s government has blocked dozens of Telegram channels linked to the “No” vote-buying campaign.
Although Moscow ran Moldova between 1944 and 1991, only 8 percent of the population outside breakaway Transnistria self-identifies as Russian. The Kremlin’s determination to assert control over Moldova is largely driven by President Putin’s project to reconstruct the Soviet-era buffer zone around the Russian heartland.
Moscow says that Ms. Sandu and her team, all strong supporters of Ukraine, are promoting “Russophobia.” Moldovans note that six months after Moldova’s president took the side of Ukraine in the war, Gazprom, Russia’s gas export monopolist, cut gas supplies by a third and then doubled prices.
Looking to Sunday’s voting, analysts say a “No” vote would make accession to Europe difficult. A weak showing by Ms. Sandu would open the doors for pro-Russian forces to prevail in next summer’s parliamentary elections.
The latest polls show about 60 percent support for a “yes” vote on the EU. In the presidential vote, there are 11 candidates. Polls indicate that Ms. Sandu will get the most votes. Then, the challenge will be to get 50 percent or more of the votes in a runoff on November 3.
Although one million Moldovans live and work outside the country, largely in EU countries, only a small minority are expected to vote. Meanwhile, in Moldova, a major wine exporter, Purcari Wineries, is producing what it calls “a liquid manifesto.” Freedom Blend is a wine made from Georgian, Moldovan, and Ukrainian grapes.