Maia Sandu, President of Moldova. Renew Europe/Flickr.

A referendum on EU membership, alleged Russian interference, a cash-for-votes buying scheme and a tense election run-off culminated in Maia Sandu clinching a second term as President of Moldova on 3 November.

Sandu was predicted to win, but the first round – which included a public vote on whether to enshrine the country’s EU aspirations into Moldova’s constitution – was marred by ‘unprecedented’ vote-buying, hybrid attacks, disinformation and claims of Russian influence.

Sandu secured just 42.4 per cent of the vote in October, short of the 50 per cent threshold to win outright, forcing a run-off. Official data indicated 50.35 per cent of the electorate voted ‘yes’ to committing to joining the EU, compared with 49.65 that voted ‘no’. Sandu, who is staunchly pro-EU, blamed the narrow margins on Russian interference and criminal groups buying the votes of citizens and denounced the scheme as ‘an assault on democracy and freedom’.

An investigation by the Moldovan police revealed that potentially thousands of citizens received money in exchange for votes in the referendum and the first round of the presidential election.

The fugitive, who now resides in Moscow and is also under Western sanctions accused of ‘malign influence campaigns’ for Russia, established the political bloc ‘Victory’ in April in a bid to halt Moldova’s European integration and bring the country closer to Russia.

Dragalin spent decades working in the US, most recently as a prosecutor in Los Angeles, and returned to her native Moldova in 2022 to lead the country’s Anti-corruption Prosecution Office.

Since August 2023 she’s spearheaded a criminal investigation into illicit political party financing and electoral corruption that led to 650 searches nationwide between October 2023 and October 2024. In November, the first person convicted in connection with the investigation was fined 613,500 Moldovan lei ($35,000) after signing a plea deal.

Although no convictions specifically related to election interference have been brought yet, Dragalin says her office has dedicated ‘significant’ resources to the ongoing investigations, which target high-level organisers of the scheme, including current serving members of Parliament, as well as low-level actors, in the hope that any convictions will have a ‘deterrent effect’ ahead of next year’s parliamentary elections.

While she understands the public desire to see convictions, she believes greater public awareness of the consequences and risks of such vote-buying activities will also be crucial to fighting the type of disinformation that targets elections.

‘Russia has developed a very robust disinformation and espionage network in particular in Europe,’ says Jitka Logesová, Member of the IBA Anti-Corruption Committee Advisory Board and a partner at Wolf Theiss in Prague. ‘Early identification of those threats is crucial, as is cross-border cooperation and exchange of intelligence information.’

Peter Stano, an EU spokesperson, denounced the ‘unprecedented level of external interference’ and said the ‘EU accession process is the strongest driver for building Moldova’s democratic resilience’. Ahead of the election, the European Commission announced a €1.8bn financial package to boost growth and accelerate reforms to support the country’s EU integration. Stano says the EU will continue to provide financial assistance ‘supporting Moldova’s reforms.’ In late November, meanwhile, the UK and Moldova signed a new security and defence partnership agreement to strengthen international cooperation on irregular migration and boost Moldova’s ‘resilience against Russian aggression’.

Commentators say next year’s parliamentary elections, which are slated for July, will probably result in a change of government, which could weaken Sandu’s mandate less than a year into her second term.

‘Moldova has squeaked the election – it’s not plain sailing,’ says James Nixey, Director of Chatham House’s Russia and Eurasia Programme. ‘Whilst we’re thinking that Moldova is a small success story, one has to ask is that actually true if it’s going to struggle with a much less Western-orientated government as of this time next year.’

A less pro-EU government could jeopardise Moldova’s path to join the bloc, he says. The EU suspended accession negotiations with Georgia, which lies on the opposite side of the Black Sea, in July after it passed a controversial ‘foreign agents’ law. Comparisons have been drawn between the alleged Russian interference in Moldova’s election and claims of its meddling in Georgia, where public protests continue to denounce the results of the parliamentary election as rigged and demand a fresh vote.

Nixey, who spent time in Moldova’s capital Chișinău prior to the vote, says there are clear reasons why the level of electoral manipulation was more ‘blatant’ in Moldova. ‘In Georgia, they can’t show themselves to be too overtly pro-Russian,’ he says. ‘In a country where 20 per cent of your territory has been annexed by Russia it’s just not a useful tactic to have a pro-Russian party or an overtly pro-Russian leader or central figure.’

Georgia’s ruling party, Georgian Dream, has denied allegations of vote-rigging – while the Kremlin has rejected accusations of interfering in the election – but all of Georgia’s four opposition parties have joined the President and declined their parliamentary mandates following what they say was an illegitimate election.