BBC Exposes Russian Election Interference Network in Moldova

Fake news oper­a­tions in Moldo­va  have been exposed in a new BBC inves­ti­ga­tion reveal­ing Russ­ian elec­tion inter­fer­ence efforts. On 22 Sep­tem­ber 2025, BBC report­ed that a secret Russ­ian-fund­ed net­work is attempt­ing to dis­rupt Moldova’s upcom­ing demo­c­ra­t­ic elec­tions through pro­pa­gan­da and dis­in­for­ma­tion cam­paigns. The net­work promised to pay par­tic­i­pants for post­ing pro-Russ­ian con­tent and fake news tar­get­ing Moldova’s pro-EU rul­ing par­ty ahead of the Sep­tem­ber 28 par­lia­men­tary bal­lot. The arti­cle begins:

A secret Russ­ian-fund­ed net­work is attempt­ing to dis­rupt upcom­ing demo­c­ra­t­ic elec­tions in an east­ern Euro­pean state, the BBC has found. Using an under­cov­er reporter, we dis­cov­ered the net­work promised to pay par­tic­i­pants if they post­ed pro-Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­da and fake news under­min­ing Moldova’s pro-EU rul­ing par­ty ahead of the coun­try’s 28 Sep­tem­ber par­lia­men­tary bal­lot. Par­tic­i­pants were paid to find sup­port­ers of Moldova’s pro-Rus­sia oppo­si­tion to secret­ly record — and also to car­ry out a so-called poll. This was done in the name of a non-exis­tent organ­i­sa­tion, mak­ing it ille­gal. The results of this selec­tive sam­pling, an organ­is­er from the net­work sug­gest­ed, could lay the ground­work to ques­tion the out­come of the elec­tion. The results of the so-called poll, sug­gest­ing the rul­ing par­ty will lose, have already been pub­lished online. In fact, offi­cial polls sug­gest the rul­ing Par­ty of Action and Sol­i­dar­i­ty (PAS) found­ed by Pres­i­dent Maia San­du is cur­rent­ly ahead of the pro-Russ­ian Patri­ot­ic Elec­toral Bloc (BEP).

Read more: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4g5kl0n5d2o?at_medium=RSS&at_campaign=rss

Key Points

• BBC under­cov­er inves­ti­ga­tion revealed Russ­ian-fund­ed net­work pay­ing for anti-gov­ern­ment dis­in­for­ma­tion in Moldova
• Net­work linked to sanc­tioned oli­garch Ilan Shor and NGO Evrazia, both con­nect­ed to Krem­lin influ­ence operations
• At least 90 Tik­Tok accounts pro­duced thou­sands of videos total­ing over 23 mil­lion views since January
• Par­tic­i­pants instruct­ed to con­duct ille­gal polling and secret­ly record pro-Russ­ian oppo­si­tion supporters

Russian Interference in Democratic Elections: How Moscow Targets Electoral Systems Across Eastern Europe and Beyond

Rus­sia has sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly esca­lat­ed its inter­fer­ence in demo­c­ra­t­ic elec­tions, evolv­ing from tra­di­tion­al influ­ence oper­a­tions into sophis­ti­cat­ed hybrid war­fare cam­paigns that threat­en the foun­da­tion of elec­toral integri­ty world­wide. Russ­ian inter­ests spent $182 mil­lion on US influ­ence oper­a­tions since 2016, with for­eign agents work­ing for Russ­ian state media out­lets spend­ing $34.8 mil­lion on pro­pa­gan­da tar­get­ing Amer­i­ca in 2021 alone, while Project Lakhta devel­oped fic­ti­tious online per­sonas that posed as US cit­i­zens to inter­fere in Amer­i­can elections.

The Krem­lin’s tac­tics have become increas­ing­ly brazen across East­ern Europe, where recent elec­tions revealed the full scope of Moscow’s elec­toral manip­u­la­tion arse­nal. Roman­ian intel­li­gence uncov­ered a mas­sive Tik­Tok oper­a­tion that ele­vat­ed far-right can­di­date Călin Georges­cu through $381,000 in undis­closed pay­ments and 85,000 attempt­ed elec­toral sys­tem hacks. Sim­i­lar­ly, the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment doc­u­ment­ed how Moldovan secu­ri­ty ser­vices iden­ti­fied approx­i­mate­ly €100 mil­lion in Russ­ian spend­ing to under­mine elec­toral process­es and get Moldovans to vote against EU ties, includ­ing a large-scale vot­er fraud scheme involv­ing $15 mil­lion trans­ferred to 130,000 Moldovans as bribery payments.

These coor­di­nat­ed attacks fol­low a con­sis­tent pat­tern designed to desta­bi­lize pro-Euro­pean gov­er­nance through mul­ti­ple vec­tors simul­ta­ne­ous­ly. Russ­ian elec­tion inter­fer­ence tac­tics trans­formed East­ern Euro­pean pol­i­tics as Moldo­va faced these sys­tem­at­ic vote-buy­ing oper­a­tions despite Pres­i­dent San­du’s nar­row EU ref­er­en­dum vic­to­ry, while Pol­ish author­i­ties doc­u­ment­ed over 50 inci­dents of Russ­ian inter­fer­ence tar­get­ing their pres­i­den­tial elec­tions. US Insti­tute of Peace analy­sis con­firms that Rus­si­a’s 2024 Moldovan inter­fer­ence includ­ed cyber­at­tacks, planned espi­onage at dias­po­ra polling sta­tions, and direct vote pur­chas­ing, with oppo­si­tion can­di­date Stoianog­lo run­ning a cam­paign fund­ed by fugi­tive pro-Russ­ian oli­garch Ilan Shor and ulti­mate­ly by the Kremlin.

The broad­er impli­ca­tions extend far beyond indi­vid­ual elec­tion out­comes, as the Atlantic Coun­cil’s analy­sis reveals that Russ­ian elec­tion inter­fer­ence cre­ates new tech­no­log­i­cal and soci­etal vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties that mali­cious actors exploit to dam­age pub­lic trust in demo­c­ra­t­ic insti­tu­tions, exploit soci­etal ten­sions, and erode the foun­da­tion of the rules-based inter­na­tion­al sys­tem. This sys­tem­at­ic cam­paign demon­strates how Russ­ian-backed media out­lets par­tic­i­pat­ed in spread­ing dis­in­for­ma­tion about US elec­tions across Euro­pean plat­forms, cre­at­ing a transna­tion­al net­work designed to under­mine demo­c­ra­t­ic legit­i­ma­cy wher­ev­er it emerges.

Exter­nal References:

•  Par­lia­ment con­demns Rus­si­a’s inter­fer­ence in Moldo­va — Euro­pean Parliament
•  Russ­ian Inter­fer­ence in the 2024 Moldovan Pres­i­den­tial Elec­tion and Con­sti­tu­tion­al Ref­er­en­dum — Unit­ed States Insti­tute of Peace
• Defin­ing Russ­ian elec­tion inter­fer­ence: An analy­sis of select 2014 to 2018 cyber enabled inci­dents — Atlantic Council

Disclaimer

The Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) employs AI through­out the post­ing process, includ­ing gen­er­at­ing sum­maries of news items, the intro­duc­tion, key points, and often the “con­text” sec­tion. We rec­om­mend ver­i­fy­ing all infor­ma­tion before use. Addi­tion­al­ly, images are AI-gen­er­at­ed and intend­ed sole­ly for illus­tra­tive pur­pos­es. While they rep­re­sent the events or indi­vid­u­als dis­cussed, they should not be inter­pret­ed as real-world photography.

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