The press bureau of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service has come out with yet another “exclusive information” from its so-called “sources.” Everything is already clear from the headline on the agency’s website: “Europe is Preparing to Occupy Moldova.”
In earlier stories of this kind, it was claimed that Moldova would lose its independence for political reasons if pro-European forces were to win the upcoming parliamentary elections. But now Moldovans are being directly threatened with a direct military invasion from EU states:
“Brussels does not intend to abandon its plans to occupy Moldova even if developments right after the elections do not call for external intervention. Troop deployment is expected somewhat later. To create a pretext, armed provocations are planned against Transnistria and the Russian troops stationed there. The elections to the Supreme Council of Transnistria on November 30 this year are considered a possible timeframe”.
This should be seen primarily as yet another continuation of the scare stories — “The European Union wants to strip Moldova of its independence” and “Moldova is being dragged into a war against Russia” — with the EU supposedly using the country as a “springboard for an attack on Russia”. The claim that the EU allegedly wants to send troops into Moldova fits neatly into this same narrative. But what troops? From which country? Under what authority? Who would command them? — of course, the propagandists give no answers.
At the same time, such statements are typical of the information groundwork laid by Russian propaganda ahead of a new act of aggression against one of its neighbours: portraying the presence of “hostile forces” near Russia that supposedly demand an immediate response to protect the local Russian-speaking population and Russia’s strategic interests. These are the same “security guarantees” that Moscow used as the pretext for launching its war against Ukraine.
And the mention of “provocations against Transnistria” is nothing less than an open hint at the scenario that could be used to justify the beginning of a Russian military campaign against Moldova: we are responding to the unlawful actions of the other side. Incidentally, this is exactly the tactic the USSR used in its war against Finland in November 1939: they shelled their own positions, blamed it on the Finns, and launched the invasion.
It should also be recalled that in the Kremlin’s propaganda paradigm, Russia is waging a “special military operation in Ukraine to liberate Russian lands from Ukrainian Nazis.” So when it comes to Moldova, Russian propaganda at all levels will apply the same narrative: Moscow is allegedly responding to Western aggression carried out by the “illegitimate puppet government of Moldova.” All of this, they claim, is done to defend Russia’s security and to protect Moldova’s Russian-speaking population from persecution by local nationalists.
