Moldova’s Little-Noticed Election Could Hand Big Win to Putin | Opinion

By Dan Perry

Anyone who cares about the future of the Western alliance needs to be looking at Moldova. One of Europe’s smallest countries, often dismissed as peripheral, is electing a new parliament on Sept. 28, and Russia is trying to haul the country into its embrace.

Geography explains why this election matters. Moldova is wedged between Ukraine, where Russia wages its brutal war, and Romania, a NATO member critical to the assistance to Kyiv. Russian “peacekeepers” already sit in the restive Transnistria region on Moldova’s eastern edge. If a pro-Russian government arises there, more would stream in, completing the Russian encirclement of Ukraine: north through Belarus, east through Donbas, south via Crimea, and west through Moldova.

Russians would also be sitting directly across the Prut River from Romania.  Just beyond that border is the Mihail Kogalniceanu Air Base, NATO’s largest hub in southeastern Europe and a critical lifeline for Ukraine. The prospect of Russian troops stationed legally within miles of such an installation shows us why Moldova matters.

Russia is working mighty hard to discredit President Maia Sandu’s pro-European Party of Action and Solidarity (PAS) while boosting the Patriotic Bloc, PAS’ main pro-Russian rival. The effect is already visible: polls show the race too close to call, with PAS hovering near 36 percent and the Patriotic Bloc just a step behind or even ahead in some surveys.  The pro-European camp could lose ground despite Sandu’s personal popularity.

Even though Sandu would remain president regardless of the upcoming election’s result, the parliament wields true power. A hostile parliamentary majority could appoint a pro-Russian prime minister, seize control of the budget, abandon reforms required for EU accession, and negotiate sweetheart deals with Moscow. It could even work to strip the Moldovan presidency of its powers and derail the country’s EU accession bid.

All this would hand Vladimir Putin the prize of flipping an EU candidate to his side and undermining both Ukraine and NATO—all without firing a shot. That’s why Moldova has become something of a grand laboratory for Russian disinformation. The country has experienced a torrent of online manipulation that includes bot-driven swarms on Facebook and TikTok, coordinated Telegram channels, and paid influencers spreading pro-Kremlin talking points. 

sia has also poured money into political operations in Moldova—around 200 million euros in 2024 alone, an extraordinary sum equal to roughly one percent of the country’s GDP. The funds have bankrolled protests, vote-buying schemes, and destabilization campaigns. It all aims to create an image of a government in chaos, blaming Sandu’s pro-European leadership for the crisis Russia engineered.

The Moldovan Orthodox Church, which is subordinate to Moscow, has also echoed Kremlin talking points, warning congregants that EU membership would destroy traditions and family values. Social media networks, many run from Moscow or through local proxies, spread endless narratives of betrayal, corruption, and economic ruin. 

Russia is also deploying energy blackmail. In January, Moscow cut off the gas deliveries that had long powered Moldova’s electricity generation, using as an excuse a fictitious debt to its Gazprom state energy company. Energy prices soared and overall inflation surged toward 30 percent, hitting food and medicine prices hardest. For Europe’s poorest state, the pain was severe. Then gas deliveries resumed only to Transnistria, the pro-Russian separatist enclave in Moldova’s east. The message was that Moscow rewards loyalty.

Romania can and does supply gas to Moldova proper—but Brussels has so far lacked the will to subsidize those deliveries fully, even though the cost of losing Moldova would dwarf the price of stabilizing it. 

A pro-Russian Moldova would validate energy blackmail as a weapon, embolden Moscow’s disinformation machine, and signal to every vulnerable society that elections can be bought and the West will sit by haplessly. It would embolden the Kremlin to repeat the formula in the Balkans or the Baltics—and to redouble its efforts in France, the U.K., Germany, and even the U.S.

What can be done? Moldova’s neighbor Romania has already faced this storm. In November 2024, its presidential election was upended when a little-known far-right candidate surged to the top of the first round amid a flood of disinformation and undeclared spending. Intelligence services later revealed what everyone suspected: the campaign had been driven by “aggressive hybrid Russian attacks,” from social media manipulation to clandestine funding channels.

The Constitutional Court annulled the entire first round just days before the runoff. Romania deserves credit for this controversial but necessary act of democratic self-defense. Naturally, the Trump machine condemned it as an affront to free speech, and in the subsequent May election backed another pro-Putin candidate, who lost. 

Moldova may soon require the same courage, but it cannot do it alone. The West has offered symbolic aid, modest subsidies, and a few fact-checking initiatives. These gestures are wholly inadequate. 

Europe needs to adopt a coordinated strategy to counter Moscow’s influence in Moldova. For starters, it must underwrite Moldova’s economy with real resources, not token sums. Subsidies to households and small businesses exist but could be raised further to blunt Moscow’s inflationary pain. A robust information campaign must counter Kremlin narratives, expose disinformation, and amplify Moldova’s pro-European option. 

Above all, the EU must send a political signal by accelerating Moldova’s accession process—as it should eventually do for Ukraine. The country is so small that integration is manageable. To delay or dither is to play into Moscow’s hands.

The Kremlin’s playbook is well known and Moldova is simply the latest target.  But if the West fails here, the message will reverberate through Tbilisi, through Vilnius, through Warsaw. That’s why Sunday’s election in tiny Moldova is the frontline in the democratic West’s struggle against Russia.

Source: https://www.newsweek.com/moldova-election-putin-opinion-10475374