September 30, 2025

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Winning the Battle, Not the War: Moldova’s Fight Against the Kremlin’s Hybrid Arsenal

(AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)

On Sunday, Moldova held pivotal parliamentary elections that delivered a victory for the pro-European Party of Action and Solidarity (PAS). Moldova’s parliamentary elections carry more weight than in many other countries because, beyond making laws, it has the authority to confirm the prime minister and cabinet, which means the party or coalition that controls parliament shapes the country’s policies at every level. For months leading up to the vote, Moldovan authorities warned of Russian influence operations. The country has long vacillated between pro-European, EU-aligned parties and pro-Russian, Kremlin-backed factions. During this election cycle, the Kremlin mounted a series of disruptive efforts to sway the outcome in its favor. Yet, despite the surge in Russian influence tactics, PAS not only won the election but also captured about 50 percent of the vote – far surpassing pre-election polls that projected just 25.8 percent, securing a majority of seats in parliament.

While Moldova’s election results mark a victory for both the country and Western interests against Russia’s increasingly aggressive influence and disruption campaigns worldwide, Moldovans have won a battle–not the war. According to various reports, the Kremlin spent anywhere from €150 million to €350 million in influencing Moldova’s 2024 and 2025 elections alone, which at its height constitutes about one percent of Moldova’s GDP.

Russia’s interference in Moldova’s elections evolved into a multi-layered hybrid campaign combining digital, financial, political, and even paramilitary tools—all while Moscow was testing NATO’s resolve elsewhere by repeatedly flying drones into European airspace. These tactics are a part of its wider hybrid strategy which aims to destabilize adversaries without provoking a conventional military response and are calibrated to stop just short of open conflict. Yet, as bold as those NATO-related incursions were, Russia has often reserved––and refined–– its most assertive tactics in countries like Moldova, which it still views as part of its former imperial sphere. It has used them as proving grounds before adapting similar methods against the wider Western world.

Over the course of Moldova’s parliamentary elections, the Kremlin fabricated stories targeting President Maia Sandu, leader of the PAS, including claims that she trafficked Ukrainian refugee children, or outright claiming that the diaspora votes consequential to her 2024 re-election were falsified. Moldovan officials reported a sharp rise in disinformation targeting these diaspora communities abroad, including fake pro-EU outlets crafted to mimic legitimate European media and spread confusion surrounding the election, as well as hoax bomb threats for several Moldovan polling stations abroad. The effort sought to demobilize diaspora voters by discouraging turnout or steering them toward Kremlin-backed opposition forces. Investigators also traced spoof websites that impersonated legitimate European media outlets and deployed AI-generated platforms like “Restmedia” to publish this pro-Kremlin propaganda that attacked Sandu, PAS, and the EU.

A report from the Moldovan NGO Reset Tech found that these campaigns were amplified through “engagement farms” based in Africa, which promoted Kremlin-aligned narratives on verified social media accounts in Moldova. Reset Tech reported that these operations utilized AI bots to flood comment sections with anti-EU messaging, documenting hundreds of coordinated TikTok and Facebook accounts that reposted identical videos and slogans to exploit platform algorithms. These tactics garnered millions of views in just a few days. Moldovan Think Tank, WatchDog Moldova, documented more than 1,500 sponsored ads on Meta platforms between April and July 2025, worth about €45,000, carrying narratives that PAS rigged elections, persecuted the Orthodox Church, and impoverished the country.

Moscow’s information operations also weaponized security fears. In September 2025, Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) alleged — without evidence — that NATO planned to invade Moldova through Ukraine and that Chi?in?u and Brussels were preparing to falsify election results, portraying Sandu as ready to invite European troops to impose a “dictatorship.” Meanwhile, Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFR Lab), which is dedicated to exposing disinformation and influence operations, cited Moldovan officials who estimate that Russia has earmarked roughly $100 million for influence operations, pro-Kremlin politicians, and cyber-attacks — a figure that dwarfs Moldova’s own counter-disinformation budget and far exceeds the resources available to its Western partners.

Moldovan officials also claimed that Moldovan citizens — many reportedly recruited in Serbia — were trained by foreign instructors, including a Russian officer from the GRU (Russia’s military intelligence agency), in provocation tactics, crowd control evasion, and even the use of firearms. The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) assessed that these preparations were intended to spark post-election unrest regardless of the vote’s outcome. According to ISW, Russian intelligence services and Kremlin-linked politicians such as fugitive Moldovan oligarch Ilan Shor and former president Igor Dodon were setting conditions for mass protests — potentially violent — to challenge the legitimacy of the election and push for Sandu’s removal before the elections even took place. Kremlin documents reportedly reviewed by Bloomberg revealed that Moscow was recruiting young men from sports clubs and criminal networks to stage provocations during and after the vote. Indeed, in the immediate aftermath of PAS’s victory, Dodon encouraged all opposition parties to organize protests in the capital.

While Russia’s campaign was unsuccessful in Moldova—perhaps because its strategy was too overt—it is likely to learn from these missteps and adapt them for future elections in Moldova and across the Western world. The Kremlin is already deploying many of these same tactics throughout Europe and the West, with varying degrees of success. Among the methods first developed in Moldova and other post-Soviet states almost a decade ago are coordinated disinformation networks targeting diaspora voters, covert financing of pro-Kremlin parties and NGOs, cyberattacks on election infrastructure, and the use of paid provocateurs to incite unrest around protests or polling sites. Variants of these tactics have since appeared in Germany, France, and the Baltics –– where disinformation and covert funding have been more effective––while efforts at staging provocations have often been detected early and disrupted. As Russia continues to probe the resilience of states and alliances, it will keep refining its methods in pursuit of greater impact.

Moldova’s success in resisting Russian interference likely stemmed from its ability not only to foil Russian operations consistently but also to be transparent and vocal about doing so—a sharp contrast to Georgia, another former Soviet state. In Georgia, the pro-Russian governing party allowed extensive election interference to take root, undermining its democratic process and jeopardizing its EU aspirations. Although both Moldova and Georgia received EU candidate status at the same time and have faced similarly aggressive Russian hybrid tactics as well as comparable economic dependencies on Moscow, Moldova’s strong electoral performance may keep it on track to join the EU in the 2030s, while Georgia’s path has grown increasingly uncertain. Just as Russia learns from its successes and failures, so too must the West if it hopes to counter the Kremlin’s tactics effectively.