In the European Parliament, a principle applies that immediately before national elections, heads of government and state are not granted access to the podium and the accompanying indirect opportunity to influence election results. However, last week an exception was made for Moldovan President Maia Sandu, who used her speech in the European Parliament to address, in Romanian, the hundreds of thousands of Moldovans living in Europe just before the parliamentary elections on September 28.
“The Kremlin’s goal is clear: to conquer Moldova through the ballot box, to use a pro-Russian Moldova against Ukraine, and to turn our country into a platform for hybrid attacks directed against the European Union,” Sandu said, reminding that Moldova has the longest common border with Ukraine of all European countries—1,200 kilometers.
Moldova was hit by a powerful Kremlin hybrid attack already last autumn. At the time, Propastop described the purchase of 130,000 votes orchestrated by the pro-Russian, fugitive oligarch Ilan Shor. The vote-buying scheme was uncovered by the investigative journalism outlet ZdG, whose two journalists, Măriuța Nistor and Natalia Zaharescu, infiltrated Shor’s criminal network ahead of the presidential elections and the EU integration referendum held in October last year. (Their investigation, “In the Service of Moscow”, earned the journalists and ZdG the European Press Prize in the investigative journalism category.)
It turned out, however, that Shor’s team had not removed Natalia Zaharescu—who had used the alias Irina Zahar—from their contacts. As a result, four days after the elections last year, she received a phone call in which she was thanked for her good work and invited to join a new social media–based disinformation unit.
Upon her agreement, Shor’s team added “Irina Zahar” to a Telegram group and promptly provided her with intensive social media training. There were initially about 50 digital activists. During the day, they had to watch training videos, and in the evenings, they listened to phone calls from their instructor, Asea Albertovna, and their supervisor, Adam.
Asea Albertovna explained the network’s goals to participants like this: “Public attention can be grabbed in two ways. The first is money, the second is fear. We play on people’s fears. We use this on social networks to capture an audience. Because of fear, the public is most interested in our content. That means we must manipulate their worries.”
The elderly population is a particularly important target. The trainings lasted three months, during which participants learned to hide their identities, manipulate algorithms, and conceal political messages behind other content.
In December last year, the number of participants in the secret social media network grew by another 500 people. The network’s focus shifted from Telegram to TikTok, where they began organizing flash mobs with hidden political content—events where groups of people were invited through the social network. Such flash mobs attracted hundreds of thousands of views.
According to Adam, the goal of the pilot project was to create a “human bot farm,” where people, rather than bots, carried out the activity. Irina Zahar was promoted to a more exclusive group called InfoLeader, whose members were promised payment for their work. Adam informed the network’s members: “This activity is paid—directly from Moscow. Not from Shor’s bloc (Pobeda), but from Moscow.”
The Kremlin’s messages were hidden behind Trump’s name
Adam explained the ideology to be spread by the network as follows: “Right now there is a harsh confrontation between the globalists and the representatives of ‘realpolitik.’ Trump represents ‘realpolitik.’ Globalists like Sandu, Zelensky, and others are merely participating in money laundering. We are living in a joyful time of upheaval. We are promoting ‘realpolitik,’ and our opponents are all sorts of USAID henchmen.”
The core messages disseminated through the network were consistently against Maia Sandu, the European Union, and USAID. Messages were also spread claiming that Trump’s election victory would mark the end of Moldova’s current government. During the Romanian presidential elections, network members were instructed to support Călin Georgescu (since many Moldovan citizens also hold Romanian citizenship), who in fact won the first round of the elections last December, but the results were annulled due to massive Kremlin interference in the elections through a campaign organized via TikTok.
Irina Zahar’s true identity was revealed when she was added to the payment system and asked for personal data and banking information. She was expelled from all of Shor’s channels, and all communication with her was deleted.
Fake polls and the government’s countermeasures
With elections approaching and ZdG’s investigation this year, Moldova has identified many more attempts at illegal election interference. One such method is so-called push polls—fake surveys. Voters receive phone calls supposedly for sociological research, but in reality, the aim is to influence their opinions with leading questions. For example: “The price of gas has risen by 350% over the past five years. What do you think of the current government’s economic competence in this context?”
However, Moldovan authorities have started taking steps to counter Kremlin influence. At the beginning of September, police and prosecutors conducted numerous searches on two occasions to uncover cases of political financing. The police detained several suspects, but they did not disclose the identity of those suspected of illegal funding. One opposition leader, Irina Vlah, claimed that her party, Moldova’s Heart, has been targeted.
Vlah’s party belongs to the large opposition alliance called the Patriotic Bloc, which includes communists, socialists, and left-wing populists. The leaders of the bloc’s represented parties have frequently traveled together to Russia, receiving high-level hospitality.
Shor’s network has also been partially disrupted by hackers who broke into his Telegram channels. Messages appeared there containing a link that revealed the names of Shor’s network members and the payments they had received. On Telegram, anonymous hackers disseminated the following message: “We have crushed the Patriotic Bloc, and we will no longer pay you.” Ilan Shor and Russia are trying to steal Moldova’s future. Your personal data and criminal activities are now visible to everyone. You are on your own now.”
According to public opinion polls conducted at the beginning of September, the Kremlin-leaning Patriotic Bloc (36%) narrowly surpasses the pro-European ruling party PAS (34.7%).
