One of the vital modest countries in Europe becomes a serious center of conflict. Russia targets the small but strategic lands of Moldova as the following big front in its war against Ukraine.
While Washington is concentrated on the battle for eastern Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin could also be victorious in Moldova.
The White House revealed over the weekend that U.S. intelligence indicated Russia was planning to arrange protests in Moldova to overthrow the pro-Western government.
The Kremlin used similar hybrid warfare tactics against Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine in 2014 and 2022.
Indeed, the Kremlin has been on a mission to sow political chaos in Moldova for months.
The US interest in thwarting Russia’s plans couldn’t be clearer.
Moldova, a rustic of about 2.5 million people, is sandwiched between NATO’s eastern border in Romania and Ukraine’s soft underbelly to the west.
A professional-Russian government would give Putin the sting to threaten each Ukraine, to which America may be very committed, and NATO itself.
Russia intensified its attacks on the Moldovan government in February after President Maia Sandu appointed pro-Western Dorin Recean as prime minister. Soon after, Ukrainian intelligence intercepted Russian plans to destabilize Moldova.
Sandu then revealed details of a Russian plot to stage a coup d’état against the Moldovan government.
These plans included opposition protests and attacks on government buildings with the assistance of residents of the Russian Federation, Belarus, Serbia and Montenegro.
Russia’s foreign ministry says Moldova’s accusations are “totally baseless,” but given Moscow’s behavior within the region last yr, its denials should not credible.
In his mission to destabilize Moldova, Putin has used energy as a weapon.
Last yr, it cut off natural gas supplies to Moldova and raised its price. Result? Domestic gas prices have increased sevenfold and inflation has increased by 35%.
In the autumn, as Moldova struggled to ease the crisis, pro-Russian politicians and residents mobilized against the pro-Western government.
Ilan Shor, the exiled pro-Russian leader of the Shor Opposition Party and a convicted fraudster, organized – and in lots of cases paid for – hundreds of individuals to protest Sandu’s resignation.
These demonstrators took advantage of Moldova’s economic strife, claiming that closer ties with the Kremlin would help the nation increase supplies of low cost Russian gas.
Russia has also launched information operations and launched cyberattacks to polarize and destabilize the country.
The U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned Shor in October for “taking up and corrupting Moldova’s political and economic institutions” and acting as an instrument of “Russia’s global influence campaign to govern the USA and its allies and partners.”
Regardless that Shor was targeted by US sanctions, Facebook continued to run ads on his behalf, benefiting from a disinformation campaign that reached hundreds of thousands of viewers in Moldova while the White House and Congress sat back.
While Putin intensifies his hybrid war with Moldova, America can expect Moscow to make use of the identical scheme it uses to justify war in Ukraine.
Putin likes to assert that his invasion was obligatory to counter NATO’s expansion into Russia’s strategic territories. But Moldova is a neutral country. It cannot join NATO.
Russia’s excuses for interfering in Moldova are getting more outlandish week by week.
In late February, the country’s defense ministry claimed without evidence that “Ukrainian saboteurs” planned to perform an offensive “false flag attack” in Transnistria, Moldova’s separatist region.
The Kremlin’s disinformation machine also claimed that Ukrainian soldiers could attack Moldova wearing Russian military uniforms.
Moscow has even drawn NATO into the narrative, with Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov claiming, again without evidence, that the unrest in Moldova is “provoked from outside.” The Russian Foreign Ministry said: “We warn the USA, NATO member countries and their Ukrainian protégés against further daring steps.”
Western leaders whistle past a cemetery, ignoring Russian moves against Moldova.
While the recent White House revelations concerning the Kremlin’s plans for Moldova are welcome, President Joe Biden has not issued a “Hands off Moldova” warning to Putin. Neither French President Emmanuel Macron nor German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
Worse, the Biden administration did not impose its own sanctions on Russian proxies in Moldova.
Why should Putin take the West seriously?
America and Europe must help strengthen Moldova against an escalating Russian hybrid war.
Western leaders mustn’t be afraid to implement their very own hybrid warfare strategies to counter Russian disinformation and cyberattacks targeting this strategically necessary country.
And the European Union should increase additional financial support to offer Moldova with alternatives to Russia’s energy dependency.
Most significantly, a united West must show Putin that his worst fears are real: Moldova and Ukraine are moving towards us, not towards him.
Western institutions will fight tooth and nail to guard them. The EU has already granted Moldova candidate membership status, and Sandu seems determined to eliminate the opportunities for strategic corruption that Russia is exploiting in her country.
The most effective technique to help Ukraine at this significant moment in its war of self-defense is to be sure that Moscow cannot open a second hybrid front on the country’s western border.
Western leaders can do that by unequivocally reassuring Moscow: Hands off Moldova.
Peter Doran is a senior associate professor at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, where Ivana Stradner is a research associate.