Moldova’s Pro-EU Party Secures Election Victory Despite Russian Interference

Moldova’s pro-EU Par­ty of Action and Sol­i­dar­i­ty has secured a slim par­lia­men­tary major­i­ty with 50.16% of the vote in elec­tions over­shad­owed by accu­sa­tions of Russ­ian inter­fer­ence. On 29 Sep­tem­ber 2025, France 24 report­ed that the rul­ing par­ty of Pres­i­dent Maia San­du pulled ahead of pro-Russ­ian rivals in the high-stakes elec­tion, keep­ing the EU can­di­date coun­try that bor­ders Ukraine on track for Euro­pean inte­gra­tion despite what offi­cials described as unprece­dent­ed Russ­ian med­dling efforts. The arti­cle begins:

Moldova’s rul­ing pro-EU par­ty on Mon­day hailed vic­to­ry in polls over­shad­owed by accu­sa­tions of Russ­ian inter­fer­ence, evok­ing an “extra­or­di­nar­i­ly dif­fi­cult strug­gle” to gain a slim par­lia­men­tary major­i­ty. The small Euro­pean Union can­di­date nation, which bor­ders Ukraine and has a pro-Rus­sia break­away region, has long been divid­ed over whether to move clos­er with Brus­sels or main­tain Sovi­et-era rela­tions with Moscow. Sun­day’s elec­tions were seen as cru­cial for the ex-Sovi­et repub­lic to main­tain its push towards EU inte­gra­tion, launched after Moscow’s 2022 inva­sion of Ukraine. “Rus­sia threw every­thing dirty it had into the fight… It’s not only PAS that won the elec­tions, the peo­ple won,” Igor Gro­su, leader of the Par­ty of Action and Sol­i­dar­i­ty (PAS), told a press conference.

Read more: https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20250928-live-moldova-s-pro-eu-party-on-course-to-win-pivotal-election-mired-in-claims-of-russian-meddling

Key Points

• The Pro-Russ­ian Patri­ot­ic Bloc received 24.19% of the vote, com­pared to PAS’s 50.16% in the 101-seat parliament.
• Elec­tion day was marked by bomb threats at polling sta­tions abroad and attempt­ed cyber­at­tacks on elec­toral infrastructure.
• For­mer Pres­i­dent Igor Dodon called for protests, claim­ing elec­tion theft and demand­ing a re-vote.
• Euro­pean lead­ers, includ­ing Zelen­sky, hailed the result as a vic­to­ry against Russ­ian desta­bi­liza­tion efforts.

Russia’s €200 Million Moldova Election Interference Campaign: Hybrid Warfare Test Case

Moldo­va has emerged as a crit­i­cal bat­tle­ground for Russ­ian influ­ence oper­a­tions, with Moscow orches­trat­ing a €200 mil­lion cam­paign rep­re­sent­ing near­ly 1% of the coun­try’s GDP to inter­fere in the 2024 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion and EU mem­ber­ship ref­er­en­dum through coor­di­nat­ed vote-buy­ing, dis­in­for­ma­tion, and cyber­at­tacks. Despite these unprece­dent­ed inter­fer­ence efforts, Pres­i­dent Maia San­du secured reelec­tion with 55% of the vote and the EU ref­er­en­dum nar­row­ly passed with 50.46%, with the Moldovan dias­po­ra prov­ing deci­sive as approx­i­mate­ly 327,000 vot­ers abroad cast bal­lots, over 82% favor­ing the pro-West­ern pres­i­dent, though the slim ref­er­en­dum mar­gin revealed deep soci­etal divi­sions that Rus­sia con­tin­ues to exploit.

Russ­ian oper­a­tions in Moldo­va employ what observers describe as a “tsuna­mi” of inter­fer­ence tac­tics far exceed­ing pre­vi­ous cam­paigns, includ­ing fugi­tive oli­garch Ilan Shor orches­trat­ing vote-buy­ing schemes with finan­cial sup­port from Russ­ian intel­li­gence net­works that report­ed­ly fun­neled $15 mil­lion to 130,000 Moldovans as part of a mas­sive bribery oper­a­tion. The Krem­lin’s mul­ti­fac­eted strat­e­gy encom­pass­es coor­di­nat­ed dis­in­for­ma­tion cam­paigns across social media plat­forms, planned espi­onage at dias­po­ra polling sta­tions, includ­ing false bomb threats at Ger­man vot­ing loca­tions, and cyber­at­tacks on gov­ern­men­tal infrastructure.

There were also train­ing camps in Rus­sia, Ser­bia, and Repub­li­ka Srp­s­ka where over 100 Moldovan activists received instruc­tion from for­mer Wag­n­er Group mer­ce­nar­ies on incit­ing riots and using vio­lent tac­tics against police to desta­bi­lize demo­c­ra­t­ic process­es. The Krem­lin’s broad­er strate­gic objec­tive cen­ters on pre­vent­ing Moldo­va from becom­ing what ana­lysts call a “poster-child for post-Sovi­et democ­ra­ti­za­tion,” block­ing the coun­try’s Euro­pean inte­gra­tion path toward its 2030 EU mem­ber­ship tar­get, and incor­po­rat­ing the for­mer Sovi­et repub­lic into Eurasian structures.

Rus­si­a’s com­pre­hen­sive desta­bi­liza­tion cam­paign exploits vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties in the autonomous Gagauzia region to pro­voke sep­a­ratist ten­sions, lever­ages eco­nom­ic coer­cion through gas sup­ply dis­rup­tions, sat­u­rates local media with pro­pa­gan­da, and main­tains approx­i­mate­ly 1,500 Russ­ian troops in the Transnis­tria break­away region along Moldova’s 1,222 kilo­me­ter bor­der with Ukraine, cre­at­ing what West­ern offi­cials rec­og­nize as a test­ing ground for evolv­ing hybrid inter­fer­ence tac­tics that Moscow intends to deploy else­where, mak­ing Moldova’s resis­tance a cru­cial test case for demo­c­ra­t­ic resilience against Russ­ian infor­ma­tion war­fare with impli­ca­tions extend­ing far beyond the small nation’s borders.

Exter­nal References:
1. Russ­ian Inter­fer­ence in the 2024 Moldovan Pres­i­den­tial Elec­tion and Con­sti­tu­tion­al Ref­er­en­dum — Unit­ed States Insti­tute of Peace
2. Moldo­va warns Rus­sia unleash­ing huge inter­fer­ence cam­paign to sway cru­cial elec­tion — CNN
3. Moldova’s 2025 Elec­tions: A Test Case for Rus­si­a’s Hybrid War­fare — Stim­son Center

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.