Kremlin’s hybrid war overshadows Moldova’s EU referendum

Moldovans will be called to the ballot boxes on Sunday to cast two votes considered pivotal for the eastern European country’s future.

Presidential elections, where pro-European incumbent Maia Sandu is bidding for re-election, will coincide with a referendum on Moldova’s EU membership bid. A “yes” to EU accession would see the government in Chișinău enshrine the wish into the country’s constitution, cementing its path into the EU.

But Moldova has been caught in the crossfire of an information war pitting EU membership against closer alignment with Russia. Pro-Europeans fear the Kremlin’s hybrid warfare techniques could skew the vote.

“Russia is sparing no effort to subvert electoral processes in Moldova,” the EU’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, said on Monday.

Earlier this month, Moldovan authorities warned that some €14 million in Russian funds had been funnelled directly into the accounts of 130,000 Moldovans in a bid to buy their anti-EU votes. Pro-Russian oligarch Ilan Shor, known for spearheading the Kremlin’s covert operations in Moldova, has also publicly offered money for votes against EU integration.

Chișinău estimates that Russia has spent as much as €100 million in total to undermine the electoral process, including through coordinated disinformation campaigns designed to sway or suppress the vote.

“This is what Russia does. It’s its modus operandi,” James Nixey, who heads the Russia and Eurasia Program at think tank Chatham House, told Euronews.

“What marks Moldova out is that society at large is reasonably split, or at least ambivalent about whether it wants to head into Europe’s embrace or return to Russia’s orbit. That gives Russia some fertile ground to play with,” he added. 

Polls put Moldovans’ support for EU membership at around 60%.

A turnout of 33% is needed for the referendum to be considered valid, meaning that many Russian-backed campaigns have focused on demobilising voters.

“Not reaching the turnout threshold would be a failure for the Moldovan government, and is a more easily achievable goal for Russia than ensuring a ‘no’ to EU accession,” according to Ondrej Ditrych, Senior Analyst at the EU Institute for Security Studies (EUISS).

But the chair of the European Parliament’s Moldovan delegation, Siegfried Mureșan, says the EU’s unwavering support for Chișinău will outweigh the Kremlin’s information war.

“It is clear that Moldovan authorities do have the capacity to organise free and democratic elections. These elections will be monitored very carefully,” Mureșan said. 

“I believe that any isolated attempt to influence the election outcome will be identified properly by the Moldovan authorities.”

Enlargement becomes geopolitical imperative

The war in Ukraine has transformed Moldova’s political arena, with parties previously calling for a mutually beneficial relationship with Russia now distancing themselves from the Kremlin.

It has also changed the mood in Brussels, where officials now see Moldova’s and other candidate countries’ accession to the EU as a geopolitical imperative. 

Russia’s deep-seated influence in the separatist region of Transnistria, which flanks Moldova’s eastern border with Ukraine, previously made Moldova’s EU accession “deeply problematic, verging on the impossible,” Nixey explained.

Moscow has 1,500 troops stationed in Transnistria, and pro-Russian rebels in the territory have ensured it has remained firmly in Russia’s orbit.

“I think what the EU has collectively decided, albeit not unanimously (…) is that it’s doable. The EU has decided to transcend the difficulty (of Transnistria) in order to protect Moldova,” Nixey explained.

The Kremlin has also recently upped its efforts to destabilise Moldova through the small autonomous region of Gagauzia to the south. On Monday, the EU sanctioned the Gagauz leader Evghenia Guțu, who has been accused of promoting separatism.

Asked whether these regions could obstruct Moldova’s path into the EU, MEP Mureșan told Euronews “the simple answer is no”.

“The EU integration of the Republic of Moldova brings benefits to all citizens in the country, irrespective of which parts of the country they live in,” he said.

The bloc is counting on an investment boost to bring the benefits of EU membership alive to citizens across the country.

Last week, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen tabled a €1.8 billion financing package, the largest EU funding to Moldova since its independence, to support the country’s path towards EU membership.

Once approved, Moldova will receive tranches of cash every six months, conditional on implementing key judicial and economic reforms.

The ‘full playbook’ of hybrid warfare

But the bloc knows it is grappling with a rival in Russia that is exploring a full range of hybrid warfare techniques to destabilise the country.

Ahead of the 20 October vote, Moscow has targeted its information war at the citizens of Moldova, using social platforms to sow distrust in the EU and delegitimise President Sandu.

Research agency Check Point recently unveiled a campaign dubbed “Operation MiddleFloor” directed at Moldovan civil servants in which counterfeit documents spread false claims about EU accession and aim to gather personal data of recipients to set the stage for malware attacks.

The campaign matches the Kremlin’s pattern of weaponising minorities to divide societies. A document purporting to come from the European Commission claims the LGBTQ+ flag would be hoisted from ministry buildings on 12 days of the year if Moldova were to become an EU member state. 

Another counterfeit email claims the Moldovan government is introducing a new decree to “attract migrants from the Middle East to compensate for the losses on the labour market.”

Moldova is no stranger to hybrid attacks aimed at getting the former Soviet republic back under Moscow’s influence.

In September 2022, as the country reeled from the effects of an energy crisis provoked by Russia’s war in Ukraine, protests fanned by the now outlawed, pro-Russian Șor party piled pressure on the pro-EU government of Maia Sandu. It later emerged that protesters had been paid by Kremlin proxies to attend.

The Kremlin’s activities are concentrated around key electoral events, making the Sunday ballot vulnerable to interference.

“Russia has been trying to undermine the modernisation and the reform processes in the Republic of Moldova for 30 years,” Mureșan explained, adding that in recent years however it has “failed to hold Moldova back on its European integration course.”

Sandu, who was elected president in December 2020, has made Moldova’s EU integration the core tenet of her mandate.

She currently leads the polls at around 30% of the voting intention but could face a tough reckoning if the vote goes into a second round, where her opponent could rally voters to block her re-election.