Russia and pro-Russians campaigning to seize power in Chisinau in 2025

The pro-Russian parties have launched the campaign for the legislative elections that will take place in 2025 in the Republic of Moldova with disinformation, claiming that Maia Sandu is not a legitimate president. The stake: the European path of the country.

The Socialists are rejecting the election results and say that Maia Sandu is just "the president of the diaspora"

In this year's presidential elections, Maia Sandu won with 55.35% of the votes. She was massively supported by Moldovan citizens living outside the country, who participated in a record number in the second round of the election – almost 330 thousand people. 82.9% of the Moldovans in the diaspora voted for Maia Sandu on November 3, 2024. So, she defeated the candidate supported by the Party of Socialists, Alexandr Stoianoglo, who had accumulated over 51% of the votes cast in the polling stations on the territory of the Republic of Moldova.

The day after the election, the Socialists stated that they didn’t recognize the result of the second round of the presidential elections and called Maia Sandu "the president of the diaspora". "Alexandr Stoianoglo, the president of the people, is the real winner of the presidential elections in Moldova. Maia Sandu is an illegitimate president, recognized only by her sponsors and supporters abroad. The people of Moldova feel betrayed and robbed. Maia Sandu lost at home. Alexandr Stoianoglo, the president of the people of Moldova, is the real victor of the presidential elections. 51.19% of the Moldovan citizens – people who work, receive pensions, pay taxes, raise their children and live here – voted for him. Maia Sandu became the "president of the diaspora". The Party of Socialists in the Republic of Moldova does not recognize the votes cast abroad, due to which Sandu was declared the winner", the PSRM stated.

The Socialists challenged the election results at the CEC and staged a protest in front of the Commission headquarters on Friday, November 8. The president of PSRM, Igor Dodon, stated that the elections were not legitimate: "We do not recognize Maia Sandu as president. Maia Sandu is not our president. The real president is Alexandr Stoianoglo!". The PSRM threatened that the protests would continue "in the coming weeks and months until the current government is gone."

Contesting elections, one of the Socialists’ older strategy. The stake of the disinformation campaign: the 2025 legislative elections

The Socialists' approach is not new. After the 2020 presidential elections, when Igor Dodon lost to Maia Sandu, the Socialist leader criticized the Moldovan diaspora for voting for the PAS leader. He then called the Moldovan citizens who voted abroad "a parallel electorate, which has its own vision and its own political agenda - in dissonance with the options of the majority population that lives and works in Moldova".

However, the Socialists’ approach did not score the expected success, because Maia Sandu and PAS, the party she had founded, were growing in popularity, and that was seen in the legislative elections of 2021, when PAS’ pro-Europeans got an absolute majority in parliament .

But the situation is different now. The referendum on European integration passed with a very narrow margin and Maia Sandu, even if she got a decisive victory in the second round of the elections, had slightly fewer votes (by about 13,000) than in 2020, while the Socialist candidate, Alexandr Stoianoglo, also in the second round, got about 60,000 more votes than Igor Dodon had achieved four years earlier. It is true that the 2024 elections were marked by massive Russian interference and an unprecedented operation of vote-buying through the Shor network. On the other hand, however, it is clear that, beyond those who sold their votes (and are willing to do so in the future) or allowed themselves to be manipulated by disinformation campaigns, there is also a mass of disaffected people. Governance is eroding, and recent years have been complicated and marked by economic problems generated primarily by the effects of the war in Ukraine. This erosion is affecting especially PAS, a party that will face the electorate in the legislative elections next year. The PAS leaders seem to have realized this, and government reshuffles, more decisive action in terms of justice reform and consultations with civil society have already been announced.

The Socialists’ campaign to undermine Maia Sandu's legitimacy, immediately after this year's presidential elections, should also be regarded from this perspective. The party - voted in 2021 by around 400,000 voters - is now trying to secure as many as possible of the 750,000 votes that Alexandr Stoaianoglo got this time. However, the Socialists’ moves are more than just an early start of the election campaign and must be seen in the wider context of Russia's efforts to block the European path of the Republic of Moldova and bring the country into its orbit.

The Socialists’ narratives coincide with those launched by Russia

It is important to note that the PSRM did not formally condemn Russia's interference in the elections, nor did the efforts of the Shor network (the fugitive oligarch's party was a coalition partner of the Socialists) to buy votes, or the irregularities committed on election day when, for example, pro-Stoianoglo voters were organized and illegally flown to polling stations in Minsk, Istanbul and Baku.

Narratives such as "president of the people" versus "president of the diaspora," "illegitimate president," "recognized by sponsors and supporters abroad," point to a Kremlin-influenced agenda. Disinformation about the Moldovan voters in the diaspora was spread immediately after the elections by both the Russian propaganda media and the official representatives of the Kremlin. They also launched fake news that the massive vote abroad was rigged.

Sandu is not the president of Moldova, said the Kremlin spokesman Dmitrii Peskov. The majority of Moldovan voters did not vote for President Maia Sandu. "Ms. Sandu is not, as far as we understand, the president of her country, because inside the country the majority of the population did not vote for her," the Kremlin representative said. He also said that these elections "were neither democratic, nor fair". The organization of the presidential elections in the Republic of Moldova was a disgrace , their result was determined from outside, not in the country, commented the Deputy Chair of the Federation Council Konstantin Kosachev. "Maia Sandu's victory in the presidential elections in the Republic of Moldova raises certain doubts due to the significant increase in the number of votes from diaspora representatives. This could be evidence of fraud at polling stations abroad", said political analyst Cornel Ciurea in a comment for RIA - Novosti. "The antagonism between the authorities and the people of the Republic of Moldova has been increasing after the parliamentary elections, and the situation in the republic is tense, commented the spokeswoman for the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Maria Zakharova. After the elections, the situation in the Republic of Moldova remains tense. The opposition announced its intention to challenge the election results. It is significant that, immediately after the results were announced, the re-elected president, Maia Sandu, rushed into thanking, in particular, the Moldovan voters from North America and Western Europe for their support, with whose votes, as in 2020, she managed to win.

In Moldova, where the incumbent president lost to her opponent, Maia Sandu was called "the president of the diaspora", and the compatriots who voted for her abroad were urged "to keep her for themselves ", the representative of the Russian MFA also said. Also, Zakharova stressed, "people's indignation does not abate against the way in which the authorities practically deprived almost half a million of the Moldovan diaspora in Russia of the right to vote". She also criticized the October 31 decision of the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Moldova to approve the results of the constitutional referendum on the accession of the Republic of Moldova to the EU, held on October 20, which in her opinion "added fuel to the fire, because the positive result was obtained by the authorities with a margin of less than 1% through the urgent mobilization of voters from the foreign diaspora".

Why the Russians’ and pro-Russians’ narratives are false: the diaspora represents a legitimate electorate, with a vital contribution to the economy of the Republic of Moldova

Igor Dodon's accusations that Maia Sandu is an "illegitimate president", elected only because of diaspora votes, are unfounded and dangerous, because they divide society. The PSRM discredits the citizens' vote, questioning the option of the majority, that is of more than 900 thousand people who chose Maia Sandu, including the right to vote of citizens who are abroad. The diaspora represents a legitimate segment of the electorate, not a foreign one.

The number of diaspora voters increased significantly, from 10,000 in 2005 to 17,000 in 2009, approximately 140,000 voters participated in the 2016 presidential election (round 2), 263,000 in the 2020 election (round 2), and in 329,000 I 2024 (round 2).

Approximately one million Moldovan citizens are living abroad, and about 100,000 go to work abroad several times a year. Most of them are young people, aged 20 to 40, who see their future in the European Union, who have a better education, who do not only get information from Russian sources. Therefore, the vote of the Moldovan citizens abroad was decisive both in the referendum of October 20, 2024 on European integration, and in the presidential election, where it also turned the score in favor of Maia Sandu, but also in general for establishing the balance of power between the pro - European and pro-Russian parties.

The money sent by the diaspora is an important source of income for the families left at home and represents, cumulatively, about 15% of the Gross Domestic Product of the Republic of Moldova. Moreover, the number of Moldovans working abroad is higher than that of people who are officially working in the country , says the economic analyst Veaceslav Ioniță. In the last 10 years, the money sent home by Moldovans who worked abroad was higher than Moldova’s exports, the expert claims.

The case of Georgia shows that the European future is not guaranteed, and Russia is counting on it

Even if the European integration was introduced in the Constitution after the October 20 referendum, a pro-Russian majority in Parliament, or a coalition that includes parties that only mimic pro-European options, could hamper, prevent or even divert the integration of the Republic Moldova in the EU.

The case of Georgia is an example that should be taken seriously in Chisinau. The Georgian Dream has delivered an increasingly sharp discourse in recent years and, moreover, beyond verbal attacks on the EU or the United States, it has adopted a series of Russian-inspired measures - see the law on foreign agents, which deals a severe blow to civil society and independent media - and based its election campaign on a series of promises that also very much resemble Russia’s narratives and agenda , from strengthening the role of the Church and the traditional family, to promises to settle the frozen conflicts in its separatist regions, which are meant to please Moscow. The actions of the Georgian Dream led the European Commission to suspend, for the time being, the accession negotiations, and the election result and the uncertain political situation in Tbilisi do not create the conditions for a quick resumption of these negotiations.

It is true that, unlike in Georgia, the pro-Russians are not in power in Chisinau and they will not prepare the elections. But, as seen in the recent elections in the Republic of Moldova, the Kremlin relies on other tools, from disinformation to voter corruption.