World Tour: A stand against Russian interference

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LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: a World Tour special report on Moldova.

On Sunday, half the voters in the small Eastern European country voted to remain in alignment with Europe instead of shifting back to Russian influence.

World’s Global Desk Chief Jenny Lind Schmitt has our report.

MAIA SANDU: I do believe that we managed to resist this huge interference and I’m actually very proud of the Moldovans.

JENNY LIND SCHMITT: That’s Moldovan President Maia Sandu at a news conference Monday morning. She’s referring to Russian interference before Moldova’s high stakes parliamentary election on Sunday.

For weeks, Sandu and other leaders have called out Russian meddling. In the days before the election, authorities arrested more than 70 people. They were allegedly linked with Russian intelligence — inside Moldova planning riots and other destabilization activities. On Friday, Moldova’s electoral commission banned two pro-Russian political parties from participating on allegations of foreign funding and bribing voters.

Orysia Lutsevych is with the British think tank Chatham House.

LUTSEVYCH: What was happening is that there was a myriad of parties that were using funding from Russia to buy votes. There were networks that were set up by one of the fugitive oligarchs Shor, where they would transfer people money for the votes they tell them to cast in the Russian banks.

Even so, Sandu’s pro-Europe Solidarity and Action Party won cleanly with 50.1% of the vote. Observers inside and outside the country are hailing it as a huge victory—not just for Moldova, but for all of Europe. But that doesn’t mean Russia has given up.

LUTSEVYCH: It is well known that Russia has a very aggressive agenda to get control of former Soviet republics and to reestablish its imperial control. That's why there's this war in Ukraine. That's why Belarus is losing its sovereignty, and that is why Moldova was also under extreme risk.

Moldova is sandwiched in between Romania and Ukraine. Under Maia Sandu’s government, the small country has been moving steadily towards EU membership. Russia sees that as a threat, and Putin wants Moldova back under his control.

Ivana Stradner is with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

STRADNER: …We love to talk about elections in Moldova, only around the elections, but actually Russia's influence operations, they are 24 hours, 365 days, trying to weaponize any issue

When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, Moldova condemned Russia and opened its doors to refugees. Russia responded by threatening the country’s gas supply. In January of this year, it cut off gas to the disputed Moldovan region of Transnistria. Analysts say it was a calculated move to foment pro-Russian sentiment in the region.

STRADNER: Russia's center of gravity is energy, and that's how they have been blackmailing Moldova for a very long time.

Stradner says if other countries don’t understand and anticipate Russia’s philosophy of warfare, they are doomed to fail. It’s not just about fake social media accounts spreading false information. It’s a complex hybrid war on many fronts, including energy weaponization, using the influence of the Russian Orthodox Church, and trying to reignite old geopolitical conflicts.

STRADNER: It is also, for example, what's happening right now with drone incursion. People forget that this is also Russian psychological warfare to make sure to scare people in the West so we do not support Ukraine.

But Stradner says the warfare goes far beyond Ukraine.

STRADNER: This war is truly about democracy versus autocracy, and that's precisely why paying attention to Moldova was extremely important for the past few months.

She says going forward the West should offer forensic assistance to countries like Moldova to uncover Russia’s illicit financing trails.

President Sandu encourages other countries to join forces in the fight against Russia’s hybrid schemes. She says authorities should do more than uncover illegal financing networks, they need to also make sure the public knows about them.

MAIA SANDU: …It’s very useful when the free media also works on that because then the citizens could see not just what the state is saying about that but what the free media is saying about that because Russia is really trying to target the trust. Russia is trying to make people not to trust the state institutions. To accuse us of lying and accuse us of just inventing this.

And Lutsevych says that ultimately, economic development can help protect Moldova.

LUTSEVYCH: There are now nearly 2 billion that has that will be invested in Moldova by European Union on the economic for economic growth, making sure that they grow productivity and can export and increase prosperity, because that prosperity also undermines Russian effort and strengthen our democracies everywhere.

For this week’s World Tour, I’m Jenny Lind Schmitt.

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