Pro-EU party leads in Moldova’s parliamentary election

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free

Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.

Moldovan President Maia Sandu’s pro-EU party led with more than 45 per cent of the vote after most of the ballots had been counted on Sunday night, in a parliamentary election seen as pivotal for the country’s future.

Sandu’s ruling Action and Solidarity party (PAS), which has campaigned on a platform of accession to the EU, was outperforming pre-election forecasts, but with about 85 per cent of the votes counted it was falling short of the outright majority in the 101-seat legislature that it had hoped to secure.

However, results were still largely pending from Moldovans living abroad, a group that has previously voted heavily in favour of PAS.

Counting in the eastern European country’s election is taking place amid wide-ranging accusations of meddling by Russia ahead of the vote. Officials accused Moscow of deploying underhand tactics to sway voters in the former Soviet republic of 2.5mn people squeezed between Ukraine and Romania.

On Sunday, cyber attacks targeted Moldova’s electoral systems and fake bomb threats sought to disrupt voting at diaspora polling stations in several European cities, according to Sandu’s national security adviser Stanislav Secrieru. 

“Co-ordinated attempts were also made to bus Transnistrian residents to polling stations in Romania,” Secrieru said, writing on Sunday on X and referring to the unrecognised breakaway republic dominated by Russia on Moldova’s eastern edge.

About 85 per cent of the 1.6mn votes cast in the election — representing a turnout of 52 per cent — had been counted by midnight in Moldova on Sunday, but only around half of the 277,000 votes cast by the diaspora.

The main rival to PAS, a group of opposition parties known as the Patriotic Electoral Bloc and led by pro-Russian former president Igor Dodon, was in second place according to preliminary results, with 26 per cent of the vote. 

Dodon, whose bloc campaigned under a hammer-and-sickle logo, repeated a call shortly after polling stations closed to his supporters to come out in protest at midday on Monday in the capital Chisinau, raising the possibility of political instability in the country.

On Sunday, Moldovan police warned they had “information regarding certain groups of individuals who intend . . . to organise disturbances and destabilisation in the capital” and warned against activities that violated the law or disrupted public order. 

Two days before the election, Serbia said it had arrested two of its citizens for providing “combat” training for more than 150 Moldovan and Romanian citizens, as part of preparations to instigate violence in Moldova around election day. Earlier, Moldovan authorities had arrested at least 74 people accused of plotting mass unrest, linked to training in Serbia they said was co-ordinated by Russian instructors. 

In an interview with the Financial Times earlier this month, Sandu also accused the Kremlin of using Orthodox priests to spread pro-Russian propaganda while deploying an extensive bot network to generate disinformation intended to sabotage her government and its EU ambitions.

“The Kremlin’s goal is clear: to capture Moldova through the ballot box, to use us against Ukraine and to turn us into a launch pad for hybrid attacks on the European Union,” Sandu told the European parliament. 

Over the past year, officials in Moldova have uncovered networks of proxies used to funnel cash into the country to pay off voters, schemes involving cryptocurrency payments and extra “pensions” paid by Russia to some elderly people in restive, ethnic minority parts of the country, cyber attacks and myriad other techniques. 

The Patriotic Electoral Bloc and its leader Dodon, who lost the presidency to Sandu in 2020, have in turn accused Sandu’s government of manipulating the electoral process, without providing evidence. 

Russia, which maintains a degree of leverage in Moldova through its dominance of Transnistria, has previously denied being involved in any election meddling abroad.

Coming in third place with 9 per cent according to preliminary results is the Alternative bloc, a nominally pro-European group co-led by Alexandr Stoianoglo, who ran for the presidency against Sandu last year.

An inconclusive result would lead to a coalition government, the make-up of which would be decisive for Moldova’s future geopolitical course. Dodon’s bloc has called for friendship with Russia, while Stoianoglo, a former prosecutor-general, has called for Moldova to be in “harmony” with “both west and east”.