In a recent interview, Moldovan President Maia Sandu disclosed extensive hybrid warfare efforts by Russia targeting Moldova’s 2024 presidential and 2025 parliamentary elections. These activities encompass illicit political party funding, voter bribery, and orchestrated fake bomb threat campaigns aimed at intimidating the Moldovan diaspora abroad to hinder voting participation. A major element involves cryptocurrency, with investigators uncovering roughly €107 million in a Russian-linked crypto wallet used to evade traditional banking oversight and fuel destabilization in real time. Sandu warned that Moldova is effectively a testing ground for Kremlin ambitions that ultimately aim to undermine democracy throughout Europe. She highlighted the challenge EU citizens face in identifying covert disinformation actors and emphasized Moldova’s EU integration as critical for democratic survival. The President stressed that the recent elections' decisive message was that Moldovans, not external forces, will determine their future sovereignty amid worsening regional instability driven by Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine.
Category: Political & Legal Subversion
Subcategory: Political Manipulation
Incident Type: Creating/manipulating political movements
Country: Moldova
Source report: radiomoldova.md/p/66868/f…
