Russia today declared Sunday's election in Moldova unfair and said it does not view winner Maya Sandu as legitimate president of the country, reported Reuters.
The pro-Western Sandu defeated the pro-Russian party-backed former attorney general in an election marred by allegations of Moscow meddling, which the Kremlin denies.
Official results show that Sandu won thanks to the strong support of Moldovans living abroad. Within the country, it loses by a minimal margin.
At a press briefing, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov made a scathing comment about the production of Sunday's election. He said hundreds of thousands of Moldovans living in Russia were not allowed to vote, unlike Moldovans living in the West, whose votes were key to Sandu's victory.
„These elections were neither democratic nor fair”, said Peskov. “As for Mrs. Sandu, as you know, in our understanding, she is not the president of her country, because in the country, the majority of people did not vote for her and we are talking about a very, very divided society. These contradictions will certainly continue, he added.
The Russian Foreign Ministry previously described the election as “the most undemocratic election campaign in all the years of Moldova's independence.
US President Joe Biden congratulated Sandu on the victory and said that Russia had failed to “undermine Moldovan democratic institutions and the electoral process”. “The people of Moldova have chosen to follow a path with Europe and the democracies of the world”, he added.
Sandu wants Moldova to stay on course for European Union membership, but the tiny country bordering Ukraine and Romania is struggling to get out of Russia's orbit. It is heavily dependent on Russian gas, and Russia maintains troops in the separatist region, which broke away from the rest of Moldova after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.