Moldovan President Maia Sandu said in an interview with the “Financial Times“ that Russia has expanded its interference in Moldovan elections to include voters living abroad, ahead of parliamentary elections this month, BNR reported.
Maia Sandu, who relied on the diaspora to win a second term last year and secure a positive vote for EU membership, told the newspaper that Moscow has stepped up its online disinformation campaign. “The Russians have targeted the diaspora,“ she said, accusing Moscow of using Russian Orthodox priests to spread propaganda and using the “Matryoshka“botnet to generate fake content, posing as legitimate foreign media outlets.
Sandu, whose pro-European Action and Solidarity party hopes to retain its majority on September 28, said she feared a repeat of the 2024 campaign, when Russian agents made fake bomb threats at Moldovan polling stations abroad, including in Germany. According to Sandu, Russia spent the equivalent of 1% of Moldova’s GDP on interfering in the 2024 Moldovan elections.
“Russia is really using a very wide range of tools in an attempt to destabilize our institutions,” she said. In an interview with the Financial Times, Maia Sandu also said she wanted the EU to learn from Moldova’s experience. “Moldova is a fragile democracy, but we see that some of the things Russia does in Moldova are then exported elsewhere. "We should not underestimate the danger to our democracies," said Maya Sandu.