KEY TAKEAWAYS
KEY TAKEAWAYS
In 2024, Russia’s hybrid war on Europe is notably targeting tiny Moldova, which, like Ukraine, is struggling for full independence from centuries of domination by Moscow. Specifically, Vladimir Putin’s government is campaigning to scuttle Moldova’s decision to join the European Union — and one strategy is to sustain opposition by the country’s minority Gagauz community. In just 11 weeks, Moldovans will vote whether to re-elect their pro-Europe president and ratify her government’s European choice. The Kremlin is sponsoring an opposition campaign that appears certain to lose those votes; Moscow may try instead to undermine the elections’ credibility, partly through political manipulation among the Gagauz.
President Putin’s determination to restore Moscow’s power over its former imperial possessions in Europe targets independence and democracy movements along a 2,400-mile arc of nations from the Baltic to the Caspian Seas. During centuries of Russia’s imperial and Soviet domination of that arc, an area of frequent conflict has been Southeastern Europe, and thus inevitably Moldova. “Moldova has historically been a frequent front line in Russian-European power struggles,” said Donald Jensen, a USIP specialist on Russia and other ex-Soviet states. “Now, along with Ukraine, it’s a front line in Europe’s efforts to consolidate democracy and the rule of law in defiance of Putin’s rule of corruption and authoritarianism.”
Moldovans will vote October 20 whether to re-elect President Maia Sandu, a prodemocracy reformer whom opinion polls show running far ahead of a fractured opposition. Polls suggest that a simultaneous referendum will ratify the government’s choice to join the European Union (EU) — a vote that Sandu’s administration hopes will make that decision politically irreversible. Russia for years has pressed Moldova to stop cultivating relations with Europe, cutting off vital gas supplies, banning Moldovan farm products from its markets and keeping military personnel in the Moldovan region of Transnistria to sustain that region’s declared independence. The Kremlin has financed and manipulated pro-Russia, anti-Europe protests, political parties and disinformation campaigns, especially among Moldova’s Russian-speaking minorities, one of the largest of which is the Gagauz.
Russia’s czarist empire conquered what is now Moldova, populated by Romanians, in the early 1800s. Moscow sought firmer control over its new borderland by encouraging settlement by other ethnic groups, notably the Gagauz, a Turkic people. For generations, czarist and Soviet governments promoted Russian language and culture among those minorities. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Gagauz, Bulgarians and other minorities feared losing their identities amid the ethnic Romanian majority of suddenly independent Moldova. In 1994 Moldova created a Gagauz autonomous region in the south. Within Moldova — roughly the size of Maryland or Taiwan with about 2.5 million people — the Gagauz and their region form roughly 5% of the population and territory.
During Moldova’s 30-plus years of independence, residents of Transnistria and Gagauzia have been alienated from Moldova’s majority across a deep linguistic divide, viewing the world through Russian-language news, propaganda and disinformation from the Kremlin and its proxies. Research by Moldova’s non-partisan Institute for Public Policy found that 90% of Gagauzia’s residents took their news from such outlets, forging opinions marked by support for Russia and mistrust toward Moldova’s government. Moscow exacerbates Gagauz fears of being extinguished as a community as Moldova builds relations with Europe, especially with neighboring Romania, to which Moldova was sometimes joined in past centuries. Since Russia’s all-out invasion of Ukraine began in 2022, Moldova has restricted broadcasts and websites of Russian media.
Alongside Russia’s propaganda, a reason for Gagauz disaffection is that “for 30 years, Moldovan governments mistakenly ignored the Gagauz, did not pursue a dialogue with them” and made no serious efforts to integrate them into the mainstream of Moldovan national life, said Oazu Nantoi, a longtime specialist in interethnic relations in Moldova and parliament deputy from Sandu’s party. In particular, Moldovan governments have failed to provide Romanian-language education for Gagauz, Nantoi said. Recent projects to teach Romanian have been ill-funded and of poor quality, he said.
Gagauz alienation is also rooted in poverty. Moldova is one of Europe’s economically poorest countries, and its south, including Gagauzia, has been one of the country’s poorest regions, with as many as 40 percent of people below the nation’s poverty line.
How might the United States and European democracies help Moldova build its internal stability — and thus better sustain peace in southeastern Europe?
So how might the United States and European democracies help Moldova build its internal stability — and thus better sustain peace in southeastern Europe? Moldovan and other analysts say a key initiative would expand and coordinate support for Moldovan improvements in education, civic engagement and public information, notably in Gagauzia. A Swedish-Finnish initiative, Gagauzia Dialogue, offers one example. Nantoi suggests specifically engaging the Gagauz business community on pragmatic ways to reduce tensions, and the risks to business of political conflict. Gagauzia’s alienation, having taken years to consolidate, will require long-term efforts to reduce. Where possible, Moldova and its partners might also seek immediate ways to reduce tensions in this election season; Moldovan analyst and diplomat Vladimir Lupan has suggested humanitarian outreach to meet the most severe needs among Gagauzia’s poor.
A recent poll by the International Republican Institute (IRI) found 34% of Moldovans preferring Sandu in the October election, with 18% naming a Russia-aligned former president, Igor Dodon. But Dodon and other prominent potential rivals are not running, leaving Sandu’s opposition fractured among less known candidates. On the simultaneous referendum, the IRI poll found 53% of voters ready to ratify Moldova’s decision to join the European Union and 36% opposed. The poll likely understates support for Sandu and the European Union, having not included respondents from Moldova’s large diaspora, which has heavily backed both. A survey by Moldova’s Institute for European Policies and Reforms showed similar results.
Putin’s government gathered five Moldovan parties in Moscow in May to forge and finance an opposition bloc around Ilan Shor, a fugitive Moldovan oligarch who is Gagauzia’s most powerful political figure. Shor fled Moldova to Israel in 2019 to avoid prison after being convicted of a $1 billion bank fraud. As the new bloc’s activists flew home from that Moscow meeting, Moldovan airport police seized $1.1 million in cash that they were carrying back to fund that campaign.
In October, Russia will be unable to prevent a victory for Sandu and EU membership, “so the Kremlin administration will try instead to compromise the integrity” and credibility of the election through disinformation and protests, said Nantoi.
Already this year, Gagauzia has been a focus of Russia-Moldova tensions. In March, Gagauzia’s governor, Yevgenia Gutsul, visited Putin in Moscow, telling him that Moldova is “taking away our [Gagauz] rights,” and receiving Putin’s vow of support. In April and May, Romanian Prime Minister Ion-Marcel Ciolacu, campaigning for his own re-election, proclaimed support for uniting Romania with Moldova, a long-discussed notion that Moldovan officials and analysts agree is not realistic in any visible future. While Ciolacu’s declaration may have been useful to his election campaign, it handed Russia an opportunity to heighten tensions in Moldova. Russian officials and state media seized on the statement and Gutsul vowed that any realization of Ciolacu’s idea would “quickly trigger Gagauzia’s separation” from Moldova.
Gutsul will remain a flashpoint in the Gagauz-Moldova conflict. She is part of Ilan Shor’s political machine, the Shor Party, and was in Moscow for the Kremlin’s creation of the opposition bloc, named in Russian “Pobeda” (“Victory”). Gutsul is under indictment and has faced preliminary trial hearings, accused of illegally funneling Russian funds into the party’s campaigns in Moldova, a charge she denies.
Both of Moldova’s restive, Russian-speaking regions, Transnistria and Gagauzia, have reasons to limit their conflicts with Moldova’s central government. Along with the rest of Moldova, both regions have grown more connected with Europe’s economies. Local farmers’ produce goes to EU consumers. And Gagauz emigrating to seek jobs elsewhere are now more likely to travel to EU nations rather than Russia as in the past.
When Russia-aligned political parties offer cash to Gagauz residents for their votes “people will take the money,” said Nantoi. “But that does not mean they want to become cannon fodder” in a violent power struggle between Russia and Moldova. Periodic surveys by the Institute for Public Policy have found a slowly growing, if still small, rate of acceptance among Gagauz that Moldova might join the European Union. And other polling has suggested that Gagauzia’s residents are most concerned about achieving practical improvements in daily life: better medical care, incomes and roads. “In the long term, we can make progress” toward stability, Nantoi said, but it will require focused efforts “on the education and dialogue that we failed” to prioritize in recent decades.
Elizabeth June is a senior program assistant with USIP’s Center for Russia and Europe.