Moldovans went to the polls on 20 October to elect their next president and to enshrine in the country’s constitution their desire to join the European Union. Both ballots, but in particular the constitutional referendum, attracted considerable pro-Kremlin disinformation and manipulation.

The result of the constitutional vote – with 50.38 per cent in favour and 49.62 per cent against, a difference of just 11,400 – would suggest that Moldovans are deeply divided on the question whether their country should one day join the EU. And indeed, this is the theme the information manipulators seized to push their own narratives about Moldova and the EU.

Still, a clear majority of Moldovans has voiced support for European integration consistently over last few years and polling ahead of the vote had shown more than 60 percent favouring the country’s EU path. The underwhelming result as well as countless reports of Russian hybrid interference in the election suggest that with this referendum more than a usual protest vote against the government might have been at play.

A ‘creeping coup’ fails to deliver

Pro-Kremlin propaganda was in high gear ahead of the vote, seeking to sway voters. In its wake, it went into overdrive, seeking to paint the outcome as a ‘defeat’ for incumbent President Maia Sandu and her pro-EU political allies and the vote as marred by voter suppression and fraud.

The most popular narrative pushed by outlets across German, French, English, and Romanian languages was that President Sandu’s administration had engaged in pervasive electoral fraud to swing the vote its way. It had allegedly employed various nefarious schemes to suppress the will of the people and carry out what RT in German described as a ‘creeping coup d’état towards a one-party state’. This is a version of the classic Kremlin narrative ‘the Elite vs. the People’.

Pravda in English language reported claims by the opposition politician Alexei Lungu that masked, armed police broke into the office of the Victory bloc in Balti and searched the homes of its employees in order to intimidate them.

The leader of the Victory bloc Ilan Shor, oligarch fugitive in Moscow, meanwhile, said that the blocking of opposition Telegram channels by the authorities in Moldova ‘put an end to democracy, replacing it with a dictatorship’.

Domestic outlets in Russia asserted that the Sandu administration had banned a number of Russian-controlled outlets to create a ‘sterile’ information environment (something Russian readers would be all too familiar with).

So why, one may ask, did the vote not go the government’s way?

Kremlin convenes its forces… three clusters

Based on data analysis during the election campaign, three distinct clusters of activity were identified within the country’s information space. The first cluster consisted of accounts that had previously engaged in disinformation and manipulation activities in Ukraine. These accounts shifted their focus toward Moldovan audiences, adapting narratives originally developed for disinformation attacks against Ukraine to fit the Moldovan context (degrading people, calling them corrupt, misfit etc.). Some of the channels within this cluster were tied to the global FIMI campaign known as Portal Kombat.

The second cluster was formed by a network of Moldovan accounts, which had behavioral links to foreign actors. These accounts functioned as proxies for the first cluster, amplifying similar narratives within Moldova’s domestic information landscape. The central themes promoted by both clusters all edged that ‘Moldova might attack Transnistria’ if the EU referendum or President Sandu’s candidacy were approved, that ‘Moldova could be dragged into the conflict in Ukraine’, and that ‘Moldova might collaborate with Ukraine in Africa to target Russian deployments in the region’. Classic scaremongering to confuse voters.

The third cluster was made up of domestic channels that, although not directly linked to known manipulators, spread similar narratives. This highlights the blurred lines within the Moldovan media ecosystem, where foreign networks are deeply intertwined with domestic channels. This is a particular sneaky tactic as foreign actors can infiltrate mainstream media outlets.

…and the coordination efforts show flooding of the space

Furthermore, Russia-based cyber-hacktivist groups, which had previously engaged in disinformation efforts during the Spanish and Polish elections, claimed responsibility for attacks on Moldovan infrastructure during this period. A common narrative pushed by all three clusters was the allegation of election fraud, a claim that accelerated as election day drew near.

Compared to other elections monitored in the past, the level of foreign manipulative activity in Moldova was notably high. Online manipulation appears to be closely coordinated with offline actions. The tactics included fabricating false letters, documents, images, and videos, using AI-generated voices to impersonate President Sandu and creating a chatbot offering money to promote anti-EU content.

These efforts did not rely on sophisticated techniques or large-scale campaigns. Instead of focusing on single, high-profile events, the manipulators seems to go for repeated, high-frequency actions aimed at generating a cumulative effect to flood the information space.

Commenting on results

Preliminary results on Sunday 20 October evening suggested the vote may have gone against Sandu and the pro-EU forces so pro-Kremlin outlets gleefully wrote about the President’s ‘complete failure’. When the tide turned and a slim victory for the pro-EU side emerged, these outlets simply doubled down and stuck to their narrative of failure and disgrace.

RT [Russia Today] in German summed it up, headlining “Pro-European President disgraces herself – Citizens don’t want EU”. According to the piece, this was ‘the dirtiest election in the short history of the Republic of Moldova. Repression, bans, and Western interference have reached an unprecedented level. And yet: Pro-European President Sandu has disgraced herself with her plan to lead the country triumphantly into the EU’.

Russian, German and English language as well as Russia-aligned Moldovan outlets all repeated allegations of widespread electoral fraud. They in particular focused on the Moldovan diaspora in Russia, which they claimed had been denied its right to vote because Moldova only opened two polling stations. This was framed as evidence of how the vote was rigged to favour the diaspora in Western Europe and the US.

On a more serious note, EU High Representative Josep Borrell welcomed the outcome on Tuesday: ‘The citizens of the Republic of Moldova made a historic choice to anchor their future within the European Union, despite massive interference and a hybrid campaign by Russia and its proxies to undermine the democratic vote in Moldova. This vote reflects their aspirations for a peaceful, independent, stable, democratic, and prosperous Moldova’.

Unprecedented Russian interference was highlighted also by US State Secretary Blinken who stated that “Russia did everything in its power to disrupt the election and referendum to undermine Moldova’s democracy, including through illicit financing and vote buying, disinformation, and malicious cyber activities”.

While Russia rejected EU accusations of interference in Moldovan elections, its fingerprints and money transfers remain all over the referendum results.

To be continued…

EUvsDisinfo has tracked the pro-Kremlin disinformation in the run-up and immediate aftermath of Sunday 20 October referendum and election. We will continue doing so as the country gears up to the second round of the presidential election on 3 November.