Who is Afraid of the European Moldova?

Today, Sunday Oct. 20, Moldovans are heading to the polls to pick their next president and to decide whether they want to introduce the objective of European integration in the country’s Constitution. The stakes are high for the country’s future.

The Kremlin’s writing checks

Russia’s fear of Moldova, a nation of 3 million people, making a free decision is so pronounced that it does not spare any resources to undermine and influence both voting campaigns. According to the estimates of Moldovan authorities, more than 100 million EUR are spent to interfere in the process only this year. The European Parliament condemned Russia’s escalating malicious activities in Moldova, recently passing a resolution with overwhelming majority.

The EU is not alone in calling out Russian malign influence campaigns in Moldova. The United States, too, have stated on Oct. 15 that Russia is working actively to undermine Moldova’s election and its European integration. According to National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby “in the last several months, Moscow has dedicated millions of dollars to influencing Moldova’s presidential election. We assess that this money has gone toward financing its preferred parties and spreading disinformation on social media”.

Meanwhile, Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin’s press secretary insists that Russia is not interfering in Moldova’s internal affairs and regrets that Russia’s supporters in Moldova are not allowed to have their parties and Russian outlets are not allowed to cover the electoral process.

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A journalistic investigation revealed that the EU accession referendum is the main target for the pro-Kremlin forces in Moldova. Ziarul de Garda’s undercover reporter, infiltrated in a voters’ buying network, was told that if the referendum fails, the pro-European president would lose grounds.

Pro-Kremlin forces still manage to flood the information space with anti-EU narratives. Some of them target the EU itself, some focus on the referendum, and others question whether the Government is truly European. In an earlier article, we outlined how the Kremlin and its associates in Moldova were seeking to discredit the referendum.

Now, after months of their disinformation experiments, pro-Kremlin mouthpieces honed in on fewer topics in order to scare voters away from EU.

All hands on deck

A music video three Russian superstars, Filip Kirkorov, Nikolay Baskov and Stas Mihailov, singing in Romanian about Moldova was released just a week before elections and referendum. The video starts with images depicting war, LGBT marches and immigrants’ riots, suggesting that these are from the EU. It then continues with nice panoramic views of Moldovan landscapes and concludes that Moldova does not need “their” problems, therefore people should say “No” to EU and vote “No” in the referendum.

These narratives – Moldova would be dragged into war, EU means LGBT and Brussels wants to send illegal immigrants to candidate countries are among the most used as the referendum gets closer.

Migrants and wealthy Europeans are coming

For example, pro-Kremlin propagandists claimed that 100 men went out of a plane flying from Alger to Ukraine that landed on a small airport in North of Moldova. Fact-checkers proved that the plane landed for maintenance and brought no people to Moldova. Nevertheless, the initial video gained almost 30 000 reactions on TikTok.

An article published by The Sunday Times, about discussions in Brussels on so-called deportation camps for migrants, which mentioned Moldova, became another hot topic for disinformation channels. Malign actors used this to scare readers that the country would be flooded with illegal immigrants deported from the EU. Chisinau stated that it is not discussing anything like this and would not accept such an idea.

On the other hand, pro-Kremlin mouthpieces, including Russian MFA, used an interview by EU Ambassador to Moldova to create a wave of discontent related to selling of land to foreigners after EU accession. Moldovan President and Prime-Minister reacted by stating that this is subject to negotiations, as it was the case of all the countries which joined the EU in the recent years. Still, there were 700 publications on the topic with more than 1.5 million views across different platforms in just several days.

Pick your poison

Pro-Kremlin actors are trying to serve different audiences and accommodate the topics accordingly. For Russian speakers, an important part of the disinformation toolkit in Moldova focuses on exacerbating sensitivities about Transnistrian and Găgăuzian regions. One article claimed that the Sandu government might help Ukraine attack Transnistria region. A second asserted that Moldova might join the EU and Ukraine in attacking the region.

Other Kremlin-linked outlets have built on this fearmongering by noting Russia’s readiness to serve as a diplomatic facilitator (opens in a new tab) between the Moldovan government and Transnistrian de facto authorities.

Similarly, Găgăuzia has also been weaponized by pro-Kremlin disinformation actors seeking to further polarize Moldovan society, including by claims that Moldovan government is suppressing free speech by fining a pro-Kremlin, Găgăuzian television company for spreading disinformation.

Moreover, stories related to Moldova allegedly preparing to host F-16 fighter jets for Ukraine kept appearing for months. In September, Russian MFA repeated this “concern,” although Chisinau stated denied such possibility.

Romanian language speakers are relatively more exposed to stoking fears about EU liberal policies, detrimental Western influence and Western values which are being “imposed” on Moldovans. An example of this was a false claim about an alleged decision to ban the Russian Orthodox Church in Moldova, which was published and promoted by Russian state-affiliated outlets and pro-Kremlin actors on Telegram.

Maria Zakharova , the spokesperson of the Russian MFA scared Moldovans that someone “will come to change their boys to girls and girls to boys” in the first week of the electoral campaign. Zakharova was standing next to prominent representatives of Ilan Shor. The sanctioned pro-Russian oligarch and politician Shor himself criticized the organization of the “Coming Out day” by a local NGO in Chisinau, stating that “Moldovans were not born for LGBT prides” and called supporters to comment on the topic.

Priests, Money and Deception

Spreading disinformation represents only a small part of the wide range of hybrid arsenal targeting the EU candidate country. Some outlets wrote that in the past month, up to 500 priests from Moldova went on pilgrimages to Russia. In the same time, at least 20 priests are under investigation (opens in a new tab) for receiving money from Ilan Shor, through a Russian bank, sanctioned by the US and EU.

Independent media have reported about priests campaigning against the EU in the churches. One of the invoked reasons is that “because of the EU values, there are already toilettes for both boys and girls in some Chisinau schools.” Another priest explained that «democracy» comes from «demonic» and, that while Europe is lacking values, the Government imports only the bad things from the EU.

Moldovan police and Anticorruption Prosecutor’s office stated on 3 October that they discovered a large scheme of corrupting voters. It included around 130,000 people and 15 million dollars transferred from Russia to Moldova. Several thousand coordinators received up to 2500 dollars a month to set up a network of people who would receive money to vote against EU integration in the referendum and for a presidential candidate. The name of the candidate would have been communicated via Telegram on the eve of the elections. Ziarul de Garda’s investigation largely confirmed the scheme.

Moldovan public servants have received false letters bearing the signs of the European Commission and of the EU Partnership Mission to Moldova. They were “informed” of the need to learn English and display LGBT flags on their institutions. Employees of the Ministry of Agriculture learned that farmers were “refused” requested help and the forged letter from EUPM called Moldovans to fight in Ukraine.

These letters were not distributed by the pro-Kremlin media and only reached the state officials. The public learned about them mainly from the Government’s statements that pointed out that the letters are false.

Responding to FIMI

Meta announced in May, August and October that it deleted at least 50 accounts, 108 pages, one group and 20 Instagram accounts involved in “coordinated inauthentic behaviour.”  These were part of a network targeting Russian-speaking audiences in Moldova. They were promoting Russian-language news brands posing as independent entities with presence on several platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, Telegram, Odnoklassniki (Russian social media platform), and TikTok. The last announcement was made on 11 October, just 9 days before elections and referendum in Moldova.

On 10 October, Telegram closed 15 channels and 95 chat-bots, including those of Ilan Shor and people from his close circle in an unprecedented move. When accessed from Moldova, the channels read that they violated local legislation. TikTok and Google stated publicly that they have dedicated teams to fight disinformation during Moldovan elections.

On 14 October, European Union adopted restrictive measures against five individuals and one entity responsible for actions destabilizing the Republic of Moldova. These are actors linked to Ilan Shor and “Evrazia,” a Russian based NGO proposing to promote the Eurasian Economic Union in Moldova.

Fog of information war

Disinformation bends the perception of reality as was illustrated by the recent Watchdog.md survey which asked about upcoming referendum votes. A clear majority of 63% declared to vote Yes against 32% who opposed the mentioning EU integration in the constitution. Yet only 53% of people believed that the YES vote has a majority support in population even though every single poll taken this year indicated a clear majority (up to 2:1) for the pro-EU decision. Only 75% of those who support EU accession believe that the majority of Moldovans support it. In contrast, 65% of those who are against the EU believe that they are the majority.

Indeed, the week before elections and EU accession referendum there is constant pressure and a kind of numbing disinformation noise in ones ears. One scandal follows another, tens of social media pages share scaring ”facts” about the EU and hundreds of trolls comment to any post with electoral promises of some politicians.

Civil society, media, government and social media platforms however became much more efficient in discovering and fighting hybrid threats, including FIMI. Law enforcement institutions are making progress in tracing illegal money transfers. Fact-checkers react to disinformation by publishing accurate data and social networks are slowly paying attention to inauthentic online behavior. The reaction, and most importantly, preventing mechanisms are still to be adjusted, but clearly the right way of fighting disinformation is by uniting the efforts.

Reprinted from EUvsDisinfo. See the original here.

EUvsDisinfo is the flagship project of the European External Action Service’s East StratCom Task Force. Its core objective is to increase public awareness and understanding of the Kremlin’s disinformation operations, and to help citizens in Europe and beyond develop resistance to digital information and media manipulation.