Russian President Vladimir Putin’s escalated invasion of Ukraine 17 months ago included an armed thrust into Moldova to strengthen Moscow’s grip there, according to a map presented then by Putin’s ally, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko. Ukraine’s staunch defense has forestalled any outright Russian military seizure of Moldova. But the Kremlin sustains a subversion campaign that weaponizes corruption, disinformation and economic pressure to hobble Moldova’s move toward Europe. Russia’s “creeping political annexation” in Moldova has a chance, within two years, to realize its aims of replacing the pro-European government with one or more Russian-backed parties and halting Moldova’s integration with Europe, a former senior Moldovan diplomat, Vlad Lupan, said in an interview.

“There is no doubt that in the long run, Moscow is counting on pro-Russian forces to seize power in Moldova,” an international analysis center on hybrid warfare, HybridCoE, reported in a March study of Russia’s activities. “Russia may try to provoke riots … and even attempt a coup,” that assessment said, but “it should be emphasized that Russia’s leverage over Moldova has decreased decisively in recent years,” because of many Moldovans’ revulsion at the Kremlin’s assault on Ukraine and erosion in Russia’s grip on Moldova’s economy.

Russia’s escalated war on Ukraine in February 2022 prompted Moldova’s government to apply for membership in the European Union (EU), which barely 100 days later accepted the Moldovan candidacy alongside that of Ukraine. Russia’s Foreign Ministry blustered that the EU sought the “enslaving” of both countries “to contain” Russia. The EU was “not thinking of the negative consequences of such a step,” it warned. Since then, the government of Moldovan President Maia Sandu has quickened both domestic reforms, largely against corruption, and talks with EU leaders on accelerating Moldova’s accession to the European body.

Since the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991, Russia has strived to restore control over Moldova, which Russia’s tsars for centuries fortified as imperial Russia’s southwest frontier against European and Ottoman Turkish powers. That history as a contested borderland of empires bequeathed the roughly 3 million Moldovans their linguistic and communal mix: Most are Romanian-speakers, culturally tied to the 19 million Romanians to their west, but many are ethnic Ukrainians, Russians, Bulgarians, Roma or Gagauz.

Russia’s Hybrid Warfare

In recent years, Putin’s regime has escalated a hybrid war to cripple Moldova’s move toward Europe, using methods it inflicts on other ex-Soviet republics — especially Ukraine and Georgia — that have sought full independence from Russia. The Kremlin’s tools of influence vary, from control over Moldova’s gas supplies to the Russian Orthodox patriarch’s jurisdiction over the Moldovan Orthodox Church. Moscow’s tactics include:

• A “frozen conflict.” Russia controls easternmost Moldova — the narrow eastern bank of the Dniester River, or Transnistria — as an insurgent, separatist entity that Moscow signals Moldova will not recover unless it accepts a Russian veto over its foreign and security policies. Corrupt oligarchs administer Transnistria’s government and dominate the economy under supervision by Russian intelligence services backed by Russian troops that have remained since the Soviet era.
• Economic pain and paid protests. Moldova is one of Europe’s economically poorest countries, with at least a quarter of its work force performing or seeking work abroad in recent years. Russia, until last year Moldova’s sole supplier of gas, hiked prices and cut supplies, multiplying home heating and electricity costs four to seven times in 2022 and spiking inflation. The Kremlin selectively punishes Moldovans for defying its will; last year it banned imports of Moldovan farm produce for supposed insect infestations — except for crops from Transnistria and from Orhei, a district where the Russia-backed Shor Party holds local power. As Moscow deepens Moldovans’ pain, the Shor Party sponsors protests demanding President Sandu’s resignation — and, the Moldovan newspaper Ziarul Garda documented, has paid protesters in cash for participating.
• Disinformation. Russia uses its state media, including television networks, plus social media and proxy groups such as the Shor Party, to mislead Moldovans with disinformation, say Moldova’s government, the independent local research organization, Watchdog, and the HybridCoE analysis center, run by EU and NATO states. Disinformation includes “creation and dissemination of fake news, and so-called deepfakes in particular,” such as a video engineered last October that purported to record President Sandu discussing with Ukraine’s prime minister a supposed Moldovan military mobilization against Russia, HybridCoE reported.
• Strategic corruption. Varied sources have publicized Moscow’s remunerations or other support of Moldovan “oligarchs” and their political machines for advancing Kremlin aims. These include separate investigations by RISE Moldova, a nonprofit journalism project, and The Washington Post; a Moldovan corruption indictment against former President Igor Dodon; U.S. sanctions declarations against the Shor Party leader, Ilan Shor; and even infighting between Russian proxies that led oligarch Vladimir Plahotniuc to broadcast a video of Dodon apparently discussing illegal funding he received from Russia.

2023: New Tensions

Ukraine said in February it had intercepted Russian plans to overthrow Sandu’s government, which she said days later Moldovan intelligence had confirmed. The White House said U.S. intelligence had determined that Russia aimed to build mass public protests into an insurrection, and a consortium of mainly European news organizations published what they reported was a leaked 2021 Kremlin plan for a political takeover of Moldova. Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov denied knowing of any such plan.

The figure behind Moldova’s months of anti-government protests — the Shor Party leader, Ilan Shor — lives in Israel after fleeing a Moldovan court’s 2017 conviction for bank fraud. Since 2020 and the electoral defeat of the Russian-backed Socialist Party of Dodon, Moscow has increased support for Shor and his party, Moldovan analysts say.

Since spring, events have shoved Shor only further to the center of the struggle for Moldova’s future. In May, Moldovan authorities arrested a Shor aide leading the protests as she tried to fly to Israel. Then the assembly of Moldova’s Gagauzia region, which is historically pro-Russian, elected the Shor Party candidate as regional leader, with a seat in the national government’s Cabinet. Moldova’s Constitutional Court banned the Shor Party in June, citing a failure to uphold the rule of law. Local analysts voiced concern that the precedent could pose future dangers for other parties and Shor vowed to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights.

Because Moldova remains so vulnerable to shocks — to its fragile energy supplies and its highly agrarian economy, and from the war so close in Ukraine — “Russia has many different ways to destabilize” the country, said diplomat Vlad Lupan, who served as Moldova’s ambassador to the United Nations and now teaches at New York University. An opinion survey last month by the Watchdog research group showed solid majority support for Sandu, her party and its European Union policy — but over time, such polls “show people’s feelings are fluctuating” fluidly, Lupan said. Russia’s political manipulations “could produce a reversal” of sentiment and a defeat of pro-European leaders in the next parliamentary elections, in 2025, he said.

Helping Moldova’s Stability

Europe and the United States are supporting Moldova’s efforts to dismantle systemic corruptions and build the more inclusive, transparent governance that will be vital to sustaining democracy, peace and stability. Last month’s summit conference in Moldova of the still-young European Political Community was a symbolic display of support. A steady stream of visits by high-level officials from Moldova’s democratic partners should be made to continue. The European Union has since announced that as much as 600 million euros could be made available to help Moldova over the coming three years, following a commitment of 1.2 billion euros since late 2021. U.S. support has included economic and prodemocracy programs, plus $267 million in emergency help for Moldova’s energy crises from the war on Ukraine and Peace Corps volunteers. Planned new efforts will aim to advance specific judicial and police reforms that the European Union requires for membership.

While the governments and bodies helping Moldova have met periodically to share information on their assistance, a standing coordination secretariat could do much more to unify the overall support for Moldova’s EU-focused reforms. A particular reason for this is that Moldova has a small, heavily burdened state bureaucracy still inexperienced in many of the efforts required for EU membership. Ill-coordinated assistance will be an exercise in self-defeat.

In the shadow of Europe’s biggest war in decades, Moldova and its ambition are a vital part of building stability and the rule of law in Europe. Broad European and bipartisan U.S. support for it exists. While the immediate crises and headlines tend to erupt elsewhere in this wider conflict, good statecraft demands that we attend steadily to the Moldovans’ struggles to prevent violent crisis from spreading.