Moldovan President Maia Sandu delivers a speech during a rally to support a European path for the country, in Chisinau, Moldova, on May 21, 2023.Vladislav Culiomza/Reuters
For more than three decades, the tiny country of Moldova has been caught in a grey zone between its European aspirations and its Soviet past.
On Sunday, supporters of President Maia Sandu are hoping to definitively put their country of 2.4 million on a Western course by returning her to office for a second term, backed by a referendum vote that is expected to see a majority support enshrining the goal of European Union membership in Moldova’s constitution.
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Standing in their way, as usual, is the Kremlin, which has meddled in Moldovan politics since the landlocked country first gained independence in 1991. One long-standing tool has been the presence of some 1,500 Russian troops stationed in Transnistria, a breakaway region nestled along Moldova’s eastern border with Ukraine.
This time, Moscow also stands accused of providing financial support to both the No camp in Sunday’s referendum and several candidates running against Ms. Sandu.
“Russian interference isn’t really new to us – we’ve seen it all in the past three decades … but what is happening is unprecedented,” said Olga Rosca, Ms. Sandu’s foreign affairs adviser, in a telephone interview. Moscow’s attempts to influence the election and the referendum have ranged “from disinformation to paying for proxies and their campaigns to voter bribing.”
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Moldovan police this month alleged that Ilan Shor, a fugitive oligarch and political opponent of Ms. Sandu’s who now lives in Moscow, had transferred US$15-million into the accounts of some 130,000 Moldovans. In exchange for the money, it’s believed the recipients have agreed to vote No in the referendum and cast their ballots for whomever Mr. Shor directs them to. Police have described the operation as a “mafia-style network, orchestrated from Moscow.”
A woman looks at a paper promoting Moldova's President Maia Sandu during an electoral meeting in Magdacesti, Moldova, Thursday, Oct. 17, 2024, ahead of a presidential election and a referendum on whether to enshrine in Moldova's Constitution its path to European Union membership, that will take place on Oct. 20.Vadim Ghirda/The Associated Press
Opinion polls nonetheless suggest that upwards of 60 per cent of Moldovans support the EU path. Such a result, Ms. Rosca said, would “send a message to Moscow that Moldova is no longer in its sphere of influence” and “a very clear message to Moldovans themselves that this is what the majority want.”
There are fears that, because voter rolls have not been updated to reflect the fact that the country’s population has shrunk by 400,000 people over the past decade, a win for the Yes camp could be undermined by a low official turnout figure. Voting will not take place in Transnistria, which has about 400,000 residents.
Which of the other 10 candidates will receive Mr. Shor’s backing in the presidential race was unclear even as late as Friday. Andrei Curararu, a public-policy specialist at WatchDog, a non-governmental organization monitoring the election and referendum, said it appeared that Moscow was still in wait-and-see mode in terms of which candidate it would support and that voters who had accepted money from Mr. Shor might only receive instructions via text messages on Saturday.
Mr. Shor, who was convicted in absentia in 2017 over his role in a scheme that defrauded Moldovan banks of $1-billion, has acknowledged sending the money – and even claims the real figure is more than US$15-million. He has argued that, as a private businessman, the money is his to donate and does not constitute election interference. He was placed under U.S. sanctions in 2022, accused of working with “corrupt oligarchs and Moscow-based entities to create political unrest in Moldova.”
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Half a dozen opinion polls suggest Ms. Sandu, a 52-year-old former World Bank executive, has a double-digit lead and should comfortably defeat her 10 opponents in Sunday’s presidential race – though with support around 35 per cent, she looks likely to fall short of the 50-per-cent mark required to avoid a runoff against whomever finishes second. A second round of voting, if necessary, would be held Nov. 3.
Her two most dangerous rivals appear to be Alexandr Stoianoglo, a 57-year-old former prosecutor standing as the candidate of the Socialist Party, which is traditionally pro-Russian, and Renato Usatii, the 45-year-old former mayor of Balti, Moldova’s second-largest city, and another Kremlin-friendly politician who argues the country would be better off joining the Moscow-led Eurasian Economic Union. Support for both men has hovered around 10 per cent in recent polls.
Former prosecutor general Alexandr Stoianoglo speaks during an event to launch his campaign for the upcoming presidential election in Chisinau, Moldova, Sept. 20, 2024.Vladislav Culiomza/Reuters
Both candidates argue that another term for Ms. Sandu, who is a loud critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin and the invasion of Ukraine, would put Moldova at risk of being drawn into the war next door.
There are also concerns that Moscow’s allies are preparing to stage street protests to undermine the credibility of any results favouring Ms. Sandu and EU accession.
“This might be leading to protests that could go violent,” said Mr. Curararu of WatchDog, which receives funding from an array of Western donors, including the Canada Fund for Local Initiatives. “The protests themselves could result in sending an image to the West that Moldovans are not as pro-EU as they pretend to be and Maia Sandu is not as popular as she’s said to be.”
The East-versus-West tensions on display in Moldova foreshadow the Oct. 26 election in Georgia, another former Soviet republic divided between those who want to join the EU and those deferential to Moscow.
Opinion polls in Georgia differ wildly, with government-affiliated agencies forecasting a sweeping win for the ruling Georgian Dream party, while polls conducted by independent media suggest opposition parties could win enough seats to form a coalition government.
Gia Abashidze, a political analyst close to Georgian Dream – a party backed by Bidzina Ivanishvili, an oligarch with ties to Moscow – said he expected the pro-Western opposition would contest the official results on Oct. 26 and stage protests outside the country’s parliament in Tbilisi.
“The temperature is very high, the rhetoric is very high, the polarization is very high,” Mr. Abashidze said, predicting there would be “weeks” of demonstrations and perhaps an opposition boycott of the new parliament.
While the EU candidacies of Georgia and Moldova have long been linked, Mr. Curararu said Moldova’s distance – as well as Ukraine’s resistance to the Russian invasion – made it easier for his country to escape Moscow’s grasp, while Georgia remains trapped. “Unlike Georgia, we don’t have a direct border with Russia. The Ukrainian shield is helping us a lot.”