Photo by Sasha Pleshco on Unsplash
As Vladimir Putin wakes up each morning and finds that the planned conquest of Ukraine, launched nearly four years ago, still hasn’t worked will he try and settled for a smaller prize, the ancient Black Sea region of Besserabia, made famous in Olivia Manning’s novels of the second world war arriving in the historic but economically backward small nations of the Balkans.
Besserabia is today better known as Moldova, a small state of 2.4 million people squeezed between Ukraine and Romania that crawled out at the end of the Soviet Empire and its linked states that emerged in the 1990s.
The obvious destination for the post Soviet states was some kind of associate status in the European Union leading to full membership, but on one condition. The Balkan nations, big like Serbia to tiny like Montenegro should agree a path of economic, judicial and political reform that was in conformity with each new nation’s ability to deliver growth, democracy and social cohesion.
Now Putin’s Russia want Moldova back in its grip. Moscow is focussing on the Romanian election for a new parliament on 28 September.
Very little western attention is paid to Moldova which perfectly fits Neville Chamberlain’s description of Czechoslovakia in 1938 as a faraway country of which we know little.
Moldova has had a tumultuous 12 months, with pro-EU President Maia Sandu securing re-election and the narrow passage of a referendum to embed EU accession into the constitution. For Moldova’s ruling Party of Action and Solidarity (PAS), the task ahead is to persuade an electorate impacted by economic pressures to stick with its European agenda. Founded as a pro-EU and anti-corruption platform in 2016, Sandu’s party PAS has governed alone since its landslide 2021 election victory, when it secured 63 out of 101 parliamentary seats.
Today the economy has entered a technical recession, with utility prices increasing by 20 to 40 per cent following the shift away from Russian gas (although many citizens receive subsidies).
Agricultural exports are facing climate-related impacts, heavy industry in the breakaway region of Transnistria has been hit by the loss of free Russian gas and Trump protectionist tariffs have hit light industry exports in areas controlled by Chișinău, the Moldovan capital.
The government has been slow to reform farm subsidies that bloc the development of a diversified, modern agrifood sector. There are still too many state-owned enterprises that are inefficient and loss-makers, as well as regulatory constraints that serve as a drag on manufacturing, and the continued exodus of skilled workers that imperils growth in the competitive services and IT sectors.
The Kremlin is pulling out all the stops to oust the PAS from power. The BBC used an undercover reporter to reveal a network which promised to pay participants if they posted pro-Russian propaganda and fake news undermining Moldova’s pro-EU ruling party ahead of the parliamentary ballot.
The BBC says they “found links between the secret network and Moldovan oligarch Ilan Shor – sanctioned by the US for the Kremlin’s malign influence operations and now a fugitive in Moscow.
“In 2024 the focus of [Ilan Shor’s] campaign was money. This year the focus is disinformation,” Moldova’s chief of police, Viorel Cernauteanu, told the BBC World Service.”
The BBC’s undercover reporter “ Ana”, and 34 other recruits, were asked to attend secret online seminars which would “prepare operatives”. With titles like “How to go from your kitchen to national leader”, they seemed to serve as a vetting process. Ana and the others had to pass regular tests on what they had learned.
Ana was told she would be paid 3,000 Moldovan lei ($170, £125) a month to produce TikTok and Facebook posts in the run-up to the election, and that she would be sent the money from Promsvyazbank (PSB), a sanctioned Russian state-owned bank which acts as the official bank for the Russian defence ministry, and is a shareholder in one of Ilan Shor’s companies.
Ana was told she and the other recruits were trained to produce social media posts using ChatGPT. Content “attracts people if the picture contains some satire… over reality”, they were told, but that too much AI should be avoided to ensure posts felt “organic”.
Inside the Telegram group, Ana and the BBC had access to previous instructions issued to participants. Initially, they had been asked for patriotic posts about historical figures in Moldovan history – but gradually the demands had become overtly political.
Ana was asked to post unfounded allegations, including the allegation that Moldova’s current government is planning to falsify the election results, Moldova’s potential EU membership is contingent on the country’s citizens changing their sexual orientation to LGBT, and that President Sandu is facilitating child trafficking.
Sunday’s election will be a test to see if voters buy this Kremlin propaganda or not.
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The Author, Denis MacShane is a former Minister of Europe and was the president of the UK’s National Union of Journalists.
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