Moldova’s ‘Peaceful Instability’
All the signs point to a difficult mandate.
By: Antonia Colibasanu
With nearly all votes counted, the incumbent and pro-Europe Party of Action and Solidarity (PAS) won about 50 percent of the vote and is projected to hold around 55 of 101 seats, giving it a single-party majority.
The pro-Russia Patriotic Electoral Bloc placed second with roughly 24-26 percent support, while the Alternative bloc finished with nearly 8 percent.
Turnout was just over 52 percent.
The losing parties have already called for protests, suggesting potential for instability that could quell the victor's momentum toward reform and make the government vulnerable to outside powers.
Critically, the result lays bare the polarization in Europe’s borderlands, their ideological divides accentuated by complex, often negative campaigning and asymmetric information operations.
What happens next will be determined by Russia’s interest in managed disorder and the intricate terrain on which Moldovan politics unfolds.
The Big Picture
Moscow’s interest in Moldova initially stemmed from imperial geopolitics.
The 1812 annexation of Bessarabia turned what is now Moldova into a gateway between the Black Sea steppe and the Balkans.
During the Soviet era, Moldova served as a forward operating base on NATO’s southeastern flank.
After the Soviet Union collapsed, Moscow took a less direct approach in wielding influence there by, for example, backing separatists in the breakaway territory of Transnistria in the 1990s.
(Russia still maintains nearly 500 “peacekeepers" in the area.)
It also made Moldova dependent on Russian energy and developed curated networks of pro-Moscow political parties, media ecosystems and Russian Orthodox church networks.
And so, when Moldova tried to cozy up to the West – by liberalizing visa requirements with the EU and developing a free trade agreement for the eventual purpose of becoming a potential member – Russia was able to maintain its position by applying trade restrictions on food and wine, waging a well-funded disinformation campaign, engaging in cybersecurity operations and supporting occasional protests.
The war in Ukraine has brought these dynamics into even starker relief.
Moldova has been collateral damage from strikes near Odesa and disruptions in energy and transport routes.
Since Russia’s full-scale invasion, the corridor just south of Odesa – the Ukrainian ports of Reni and Izmail that accommodate barges and ships heading toward Romania’s Sulina Canal and the Black Sea hub of Constanta – has become a critical export route for Ukrainian goods when direct Black Sea passages are threatened.
It is, therefore, common for Moldovan voters to choose not only between competing domestic programs but also between fundamentally different foreign alignments.
But now is an unusually tense period because it is unfolding under the shadow of sustained accusations of Russian interference and hybrid tactics.
The election campaign pitted the pro-Europe Party of Action and Solidarity, led by Maia Sandu, against a coalition of pro-Russian parties called the Patriotic Electoral Bloc, led by Igor Dodon.
(Other smaller parties are also in the mix, but their purpose is to be a spoiler or a kingmaker.)
Pro-EU parties currently hold power, and their platforms tend to include things like EU-candidate status and the associated institutional reforms needed to accelerate the accession process.
This time around, they’ve also accused Moscow-linked networks of trying to subvert voter turnout.
The Central Electoral Commission and the courts moved against several candidates accused of illicit foreign financing or being “successors” to banned affiliates.
Those moves included striking pro-Russian formations from the ballot at the 11th hour.
Reuters and The Associated Press reported fresh bans just before voting as security services executed raids against “vote buying” and “influence operations.”
In short, the government argued that Moldova could not possibly have free elections amid Russian meddling.
Critics said the government’s actions politicized the playing field.
They argued that legal revisions since the 2022 electoral code – and new rules enabling temporary limits on party activity or barring “successor” entities – created standards that could be applied selectively.
An interim report by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe's Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights noted a spike in litigation over registration decisions and concerns that new requirements were onerous and open to interpretation.
The net result was an electorate torn between two sides, each claiming the other was trying to exclude them.
Moldova’s democratic resilience was tested in ways far beyond the usual electoral competition.
The results will shape not only the next coalition in Chisinau but also how the EU judges the country’s readiness for deeper integration.
Divisions
The political situation in Moldova has hardened identities and media ecosystems, resulting in dual narratives about state “defense against interference” versus “abuse of institutions,” and a flurry of messages that push undecided voters into camps rather than toward a consensus.
This aggravates – and is aggravated by – the very real problems facing Moldovan society.
One is economic stress.
Households are still coping with price shocks and energy volatility from disrupted Russian gas supplies, expensive spot-market purchases and knock-on electricity costs.
Analyses ahead of the weekend’s vote warned that gas and power affordability would be decisive for swing voters, and campaign messaging across the spectrum converged on who could stabilize bills fastest.
Remittances from Moldovans working abroad complicated things further.
Recent data from the National Bank of Moldova showed that the overwhelming share of transfers (roughly 70-80 percent) now comes in euros, not rubles.
By 2025, ruble-based transfers have nearly vanished after Moldovan banks restricted operations with Russia.
This shift reflects labor migration patterns and political alignments: Families sustained by relatives working in Italy, Germany or France tend to lean toward the EU path, while those still tied to Russia recall past stability and cheaper energy.
Yet the European Union is facing inflationary pressure, high living costs and a slowing economy, so Moldovan workers abroad cannot save as much as they once could.
Those disappointed with their prospects in Europe can become skeptical of Brussels and channel that disillusionment into votes for parties critical of the EU, adding another layer of volatility to an already polarized campaign.
Then there is Moldova’s ethnic composition.
The country is a mosaic, with a Moldovan/Romanian majority living alongside large Ukrainian, Russian, Gagauz and Bulgarian minorities (not to mention different mixes in Transnistria).
Demographic patterns tend to align with media diets, party preferences and security perceptions, so campaigns tailor messages accordingly.
Identity, language and other social networks often matter as much as economics in mobilizing voters.
Among Bulgarians concentrated in Taraclia, heavy use of Russian-language media and long-standing cultural links have traditionally fostered support for pro-Russia parties.
Ukrainian-origin communities, while diverse, are also largely Russian-speaking and thus more exposed to Kremlin narratives.
The invasion of Ukraine has made attitudes more ambivalent; while there is still a cultural affinity for Russia, many oppose the conflict taking place in their neighborhood.
These nuances mean that ethnic minority regions can be swing zones for influence campaigns, even if not monolithic in their political leanings.
Nowhere is this clearer than in Gagauzia, the autonomous, mostly Turkic-speaking and Orthodox region in the south.
Gagauzia has long leaned toward Moscow; in a 2014 regional referendum, about 98 percent backed integration with a Russia-led customs union and endorsed a law on “deferred independence” if Moldova were to join the EU.
That orientation is even sharper now.
The region’s governor, who was elected in 2023 with support from structures linked to the banned Shor Party, was found guilty of accepting illicit Russian funding, which only reinforced mutual suspicions.
Other examples abound, but the bottom line is that though ethnicity doesn’t determine voting behavior on its own, it shapes how national issues are perceived.
In Gagauzia, appeals about cheap energy and “traditional values” resonate through local elites and church networks.
In Transnistria, access to polling and the Russian military presence shape both participation and narrative.
In the Bulgarian and Ukrainian communities, Russian-language media consumption and remittance patterns frame how security and economic debates are interpreted.
Meanwhile, Romanian-speaking urban voters tend to filter issues through an EU-integration lens.
Similar patterns emerge along religious lines. Moldova is split along two rival Orthodox jurisdictions: the Moscow-linked Metropolis of Chisinau and All Moldova, and the Romanian-linked Metropolis of Bessarabia.
In the runup to the weekend’s vote, both jurisdictions issued public messages about clergy staying out of partisan politics, but their worshippers took very different cues.
The Bessarabia camp framed the vote as a moral fork in the road and thus openly encouraged responsible participation.
The Moscow-affiliated camp circulated pro-Kremlin talking points in parishes and church-adjacent channels.
Investigative reporting indicates that Russia has used the church to amplify narratives against EU integration.
Reuters found a coordinated effort in which several hundred Moldovan priests were taken on expense-paid trips to Russian holy sites, exposed to political messaging and encouraged to run parish social media campaigns warning that Europe threatens “traditional values.”
Those networks amplified content across dozens of Orthodox accounts on Telegram and other platforms.
The political impact is twofold.
First, church networks help translate abstract foreign policy objectives into everyday identity frameworks – “faith and family” versus “Brussels values” – that resonate in rural areas and among older voters.
They provide reliable infrastructure for messaging.
None of this means the church acts monolithically or that the state is helpless. Competing jurisdictions offer counter-messages, and some hierarchs have tried to fence clergy off from party politics.
But the evidence from this cycle suggests the Orthodox sphere remains one of the most consequential battlegrounds for Moldovan elections, where questions of faith, identity and foreign policy alignment are deliberately intertwined.
Consequences
A victory for the pro-Europe camp reinforces the narrative that the West is, at Moscow’s expense, gaining influence in Russia’s near abroad.
A victory for the pro-Russia camp would have suggested the opposite.
The outcome does not redraw lines on the political battle map, but it offers early indications of momentum and sentiment.
To be sure, a pro-Europe victory does not automatically advance Moldova’s EU candidacy.
That will still be a long and difficult process.
But it raises the cost for the Kremlin to maintain influence.
Moscow’s objective, then, is to block, slow or exhaust these efforts rather than to fully control them.
Put simply, destabilization is cheaper than dominance.
With the pro-Europe camp winning, the likely Russian response is more, not less, investment in pressure points via Transnistria and Gagauzia to keep Moldova unstable at low cost.
The near-term outlook for Moldova, then, is constrained continuity.
In the best-case scenario, the post-election government will get a clean mandate to advance the EU integration process.
Meanwhile, Russia has clear incentives to sustain low-cost instability while prioritizing its war effort in Ukraine.
Under these conditions, volatility is likely to manifest not through dramatic institutional rupture but through recurrent street mobilization – that is, protests and counter-protests, with a growing risk of clashes centered on salient triggers such as energy prices, judicial decisions, party disqualifications and other disputes.
This “peaceful instability” may not decisively alter the strategic balance, but it could still sap administrative capacity and delay reforms absent an exogenous shock.
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