In a national referendum on October 20, Moldovans voted with a small majority of 50,35 percent in favor of securing a path to EU membership by enshrining it in the Constitution.
But the result was overshadowed by allegations of Moscow-backed vote-buying.
In the presidential elections held on the same day, the current pro-Western president Maja Sandu received 42 percent of the vote, but did not manage to win a complete majority. Tomorrow, on Sunday, he will face Alexander Stojanoglu, a pro-Russia former state prosecutor, in a runoff that is again being seen as a choice between geopolitical opposites.
As with the EU referendum, a poll published this Sunday by the research company "iData" points to a close race on Sunday that favors Sandu, an outcome that could rely on the large Moldovan diaspora.
The president has significant powers in areas such as foreign policy and national security.
After two October votes, Moldovan law enforcement said the vote-buying scheme was orchestrated by Ilan Shor, an exiled oligarch currently living in Russia and convicted in absentia in 2023 of fraud and money laundering. Prosecutors say $39 million was paid to voters between September and October. More than 130.000 of them received money through a Russian bank under international sanctions. Shore denies any wrongdoing.
"These people who go to Moscow, the so-called government-in-exile of Ilan Shor, who come with very large sums of money, are left to roam freely," said historian and politician Octavian Tiku, who ran in the presidential race.
It was obvious, Tiku added, that the vote "will not be fair or democratic." Of the 11 candidates in the first round, he was the only one to support Sandu in the second round.
Voters from Moldova's pro-Kremlin breakaway region of Transnistria, which declared independence after a brief war in the early 1990s, can vote in Moldova itself even though it broke away from it. Transnistria has been a source of tension during the war in neighboring Ukraine, particularly as it hosts a military base with 1.500 Russian troops.
Tiku warned that if Russian troops in Ukraine reach the port city of Odessa, they could "join the Transnistrian region, and then the Republic of Moldova will be occupied."
In Gagauzia, an autonomous part of Moldova, where only five percent voted for the EU, a doctor was detained for allegedly forcing 25 residents of a nursing home to vote for a candidate they did not choose. Police said they had obtained compelling evidence, including financial transfers from the same Russian bank under sanctions.
Anti-corruption authorities conducted hundreds of searches and seized more than $2,7 million (€2,5 million) in cash.
Prosecutors raided the headquarters of a political party on Thursday and said 12 people were suspected of paying voters to choose a candidate in the presidential race. Criminal proceedings have also been initiated in which 40 employees of a state agency are suspected of accepting election bribes.
Instead of receiving the overwhelming support Sandu had hoped for, the results in both races exposed the Moldovan judiciary as incapable of adequately protecting the democratic process. It also allowed the pro-Moscow opposition to question the validity of the vote.
Igor Dodon, leader of the Socialist Party and a former president with close ties to Russia, said this Sunday that the party does not recognize the referendum result and called Sandu a "dictator in a skirt" who will "do whatever it takes to stay in power."
Sandu admitted that the vote was characterized by unprecedented fraud and foreign interference - a "vile attack" on Moldova's sovereignty that undermined the results.
"If the judiciary does not wake up, if it closes its eyes to the sale of the land, the future of Moldova will be in danger for decades," she warned.
Moldova is one of the poorest European countries and has been hit hard by inflation since the beginning of the war in Ukraine. Tatjana Kojokari, an expert on Russian foreign policy at the WatchDog research center in Chisinau, says this means that many citizens could "fall for corruption in elections" for relatively small sums of money.
"It is very important for Russia to have as many resources as possible for its activities. This creates chaos, both in the informational and political sense," Kojokari said, adding that Russia "turned to Cold War tactics and skillfully uses them adapted to social media." .
Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Moldova applied to join the EU. It received candidate status in June of that year, and in the summer of 2024, Brussels agreed to start negotiations on admission to membership. The sharp shift towards the West annoyed Moscow and significantly soured its relations with Chisinau.
Since then, Moldovan authorities have repeatedly accused Russia of waging a massive "hybrid war" - from widespread disinformation campaigns, to protests by pro-Russian parties, to vote-buying schemes that undermine elections across the country. Russia has denied meddling.
Social media platforms have played a key role in the spread of Russian propaganda in Moldova, according to Andrej Rusu, a media monitoring expert at WatchDog. "One of the biggest lies is that if Moldovans enter the EU, they will go to war with Russia, lose their faith and traditional values, or be forced to follow LGBT propaganda," he said.
Moldovans who lived in the Soviet Union, he added, may have a hard time spotting Russian propaganda about the EU and the West and distinguishing real videos from AI-generated ones, such as those that have appeared frequently on the Internet showing Sanda.
In recent weeks, Meta and Telegram have removed multiple fake accounts insulting the EU and Sanda and expressing support for pro-Russian parties.
However, Moldovan observers warn that Moscow's main target could be parliamentary elections in 2025. Declining support for the ruling pro-Western Action and Solidarity Party suggests it could lose its 101-seat parliamentary majority.
"We are already waiting for the parliamentary elections to see other tactics and strategies," added Tatjana Kojokari, an analyst for Russia. "This government will no longer be able to secure a parliamentary majority," she believes.
Tiku warned that more must be done to counter foreign interference or face pro-Russian forces because of the "dangers of hybrid governance" in the country.
"Very good laws have been adopted, but they are not implemented," he said. Russian President Vladimir "Putin does not want a war in Moldova, he wants to show the world and Europe a case in which the policy of European integration has failed," he believes.
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