Home / Europe / Between future and past: recent elections in Moldova, Georgia and Romania

Between future and past: recent elections in Moldova, Georgia and Romania

23 December, 2024

By Irena Baboi – Senior Fellow

On 3 November, pro-EU candidate Maia Sandu won a second term as President of Moldova after a tense election run-off, securing 55% of the vote according to the final count. The elections – seen as a choice between Europe and Russia – were marred by alleged Russian interference, a cash-for-votes buying scheme, bomb scares in voting polls abroad, hybrid attacks, and disinformation. The first round of presidential elections included a referendum on whether or not to enshrine the country’s EU aspirations into Moldova’s constitution, and the official data indicates that only 50.4% of the electorate voted ‘yes’ when it came to their country committing to joining the European Union. Events in Moldova are part of a wider and escalating trend of Russian involvement in national elections, an involvement that has the ultimate goal of influencing countries’ foreign policy orientation. At the very least, this involvement has the potential to create and fuel political and social crises in countries with a fragmented political landscape – a win in and of itself, as all decisions concerning these countries’ futures come temporarily to a standstill.

Despite Moldova opening accession negotiations with the European Union last year, the recent presidential win was a narrow one for pro-Western Maia Sandu and her Party of Action and Solidarity (PAS), as in Moldova itself it was her rival Alexandr Stoianoglo – backed by the pro-Russian Party of Socialists – who won 51% of the vote. Stoianoglo had previously called for a closer relationship with Russia, but when casting his vote, he promised to be an “apolitical president”, and said that he had voted for a “a Moldova that should develop in harmony with both the West and the East”. The Party of Socialists candidate polled particularly well in rural areas and the south of the country, but Sandu was ahead in the cities and among the younger voters, winning the capital Chişinău and dominating among Moldova’s diaspora voters. On winning the vote, Maia Sandu called for unity in her country, and noted that all Moldovans are “one family”.

In a joint statement congratulating Maia Sandu on her re-election, the European Commission and the European Union’s High Representative Josep Borrell said there had been “unprecedented interference by Russia” in the Moldovan election. On the day of the election, the president’s national security adviser Stanislav Secreriu alleged that there had been “massive interference” from Russia in Moldova’s electoral process, and said that this interference had “high potential to distort the outcome”. Secreriu also said that Russia had organised buses and large charter flights to bring voters to polling stations, while Moldova’s election commission declared it was aware of reports of organised and illegal transports of voters by air and land in Russia, Belarus, Azerbaijan and Turkey. Secreriu added that bomb scares had briefly disrupted voting in Moldova, at UK polling stations in Liverpool and Northampton, and at Frankfurt and Kaiserslautern in Germany.

An investigation by the Moldovan police also revealed that potentially thousands of citizens received money in exchange for votes in both the referendum and the first round of the presidential elections. The Moldovan authorities believe the vote-buying scheme is part of an ongoing large-scale operation by Moldovan oligarch Ilan Shor to buy political influence. Shor fled Moldova in 2019 and was sentenced in 2023 in absentia to fifteen years imprisonment for money laundering and embezzling nearly $1 billion (nearly £800 million), and ordered to return $290 million (approximately £230 million pounds) to the state. Chief of the Anti-corruption Prosecution Office in Moldova Veronica Dragalin said that she had never seen anything like this in her career: “We’ve been able to document the clear Russian influence in terms of Russian money coming into our country with a very clear, stated goal to influence the election. It might be one of the most obvious attempts at meddling with our democracy”. A week after the run-off elections, during a meeting at the ministry’s office in Chişinău, the Moldovan Foreign Ministry handed a “note of firm protest” in relation to Russia’s “illegal and deliberate interference” in the Moldovan elections to Russian ambassador Oleg Ozerov. Russian authorities continue to deny any interference in the Moldovan elections, but Moscow has deemed the voting unfair, and declared that Russia does not recognise Maia Sandu as the legitimate president of Moldova.

Before Maia Sandu came to power in 2020 and her pro-European Party of Action and Solidarity (PAS) won a majority in the 2021 parliamentary elections, Moldova was governed by the pro-Russian Party of Socialists. In 2016, former president Igor Dodon won the first direct presidential election in sixteen years, as before this, Moldova’s head of state was elected by the Moldovan parliament. A former Soviet republic, Moldova declared independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, but joined its successor, the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). In 2005, Moldova and the European Union established an action plan with the purpose of improving cooperation between Moldova and the union, and in 2014, Moldova signed an Association Agreement (AA) and Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area (DCFTA) with the European Union. That same year, in the country’s parliamentary election, the Party of Socialists – who ran on an openly pro-Russia platform of Eurasian integration, and promised to denounce Moldova’s AA with the EU – emerged as the main winner, showing that far from everyone in Moldova was in agreement on the benefits of a European path.

When Maia Sandu and her PAS first came to power, Sandu vowed to balance her country’s ties with both the West and Russia. Until 2022, Moldova received all its gas from Russia and the vast majority of its electricity from Moldova’s breakaway region of Transnistria, which continues to be supported by Russia with a military presence and energy schemes. However, since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Sandu has accused Moscow of interfering in Moldova’s politics, sought to diversify Moldova’s gas supply, and has pursued an increasingly Western-oriented foreign policy for her country. In March 2022, Moldova submitted the membership application to join the European Union, and in June of the same year, the country was granted candidate status by the Union. In December 2023, the European Council greenlighted the opening of accession negotiations with Moldova, and the latter announced that it intends to fully withdraw from the CIS by the end of 2024.

Events in fellow post-Soviet state and recent applicant for European Union membership Georgia are an example of what could have happened if Maia Sandu had not won the November elections. On 26 October, Georgia’s ruling pro-Russia party – Georgian Dream (GD) – retained power in a contested parliamentary election, a result which the pro-Western opposition refused to accept. Amid accusations of democratic backsliding, a preliminary report by the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) said it “noted reports of intimidation, coercion and pressure on voters, particularly on public sector employees and other groups, raising concerns about the ability of some voters to cast their vote without fear of retribution”. In power since 2012, the increasingly authoritarian GD has been steering Georgia – a country where, according to polls, 80% of people favour joining the European Union – away from the West and closer to Russia, showing a reluctance to condemn Moscow for its invasion of Ukraine, and vowing to ban all the leading opposition parties and remove all opposition lawmakers if re-elected.

The GD’s contested victory was one in a series of events that sparked widespread demonstrations in Georgia. Back in May, the Georgian parliament voted to adopt a controversial law which designates civil society groups that receive more than twenty percent of their funding from abroad as “pursuing the interests of a foreign power”, effectively branding Western-backed NGOs and media outlets as “foreign agents”. In response, the European Union – who had granted Georgia candidate member status in December 2023 – announced that Georgia’s bid for accession would be halted and its membership status suspended, as the law adopted by the Georgian parliament is incompatible with European Union values and standards. The European Union also froze $32 million (£25 million) in aid to Georgia’s defence ministry, while the United States has paused more than $95 million (£74 million) in aid to the Georgian government, and imposed visa restrictions on dozens of Georgian Dream officials.

At the end of November, the European Parliament adopted a non-binding resolution rejecting the results of Georgia’s 26 October parliamentary elections due to “significant irregularities”, condemning the vote as neither free nor fair. The resolution also called for new elections to be held within a year under international supervision, and for sanctions to be imposed on top government officials. In retaliation, Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze accused the European Union of “blackmail”, and announced that Georgia will suspend talks on European Union accession until 2028. This led to the round-the-clock protests in Tbilisi spreading to the rest of the country, with thousands of pro-EU demonstrators clashing with the police, as the latter have responded with tear gas and water cannons. Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili – whose position is largely ceremonial – has appealed to European countries to confront what she describes as a Russian attempt to impose control on her nation. Zourabichvili has also branded the October election a “Russian special operation”, a clear reference to Moscow’s preferred euphemism for Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

In a shocking and even more alarming twist of events, in NATO and European Union member state Romania, far-right pro-Russia candidate Călin Georgescu emerged as the winner of the first round of presidential elections held on 24 November. Georgescu – who ran independently and campaigned exclusively on TikTok – saw his popularity increase from 1% shortly before the race to 23% when all votes where counted. The result prompted accusations of fraud and calls for a recount – which the Central Election Bureau approved and conducted – and on 2 December, Romania’s Constitutional Court initially validated the outcome of the first round. Georgescu was set to face reformist Elena Lasconi, leader of the Save Romania Union (USR) party, in a runoff on 8 December, amid thousands of Romanians taking to streets every day since the first round of elections, calling for their country to not return to a familiar past. In another shocking twist of events, less than a week later, the Constitutional Court annulled the first round of the country’s presidential elections, following declassified evidence from the Romanian security services that Russia had carried out an “aggressive hybrid action” to influence the electoral process. The Romanian government will now need to devise a timeline for fresh elections, with the entire process restarting from scratch.

Largely unknown by the Romanian public before his surprising win, Georgescu was a prominent figure in the far-right Alliance for the Union of Romanians party (AUR), but was expelled for being too radical after he praised leaders of the Iron Guard, a Romanian fascist movement from World War Two. A conspiracy theorist campaigning under the slogan “Restore the dignity of the Romanian nation”, Georgescu has strongly criticised the European Union and NATO, expressed admiration for the Russian culture, and described President Vladimir Putin as a man who loves his country. Playing on people’s disillusionment with recent governments and the current economic situation, Georgescu promised to “put Romania first”, above all of the country’s international commitments. His polarising election campaign videos on TikTok have been viewed millions of times, prompting Romania’s Permanent Electoral Authority to accuse TikTok of giving Georgescu an unfair advantage. Before the election, the social media platform was instructed that presidential candidates must be identified as such and must disclose their financial sources, a rule that TikTok allegedly did not enforce in the case of Georgescu.

Following the result of the 24 November election, Romania’s Supreme Council of National Defence declared that the country was the target of various coordinated actions leading up to this first round of the presidential vote. Documents declassified by Romania’s security council said that the country was the target of “an aggressive hybrid Russian action” during recent election campaigns, and that Georgescu was massively promoted on TikTok with backing from Russia through multiple methods, including coordinated accounts, algorithms to boost his presence on the platform, and paid promotion. Influencers on TikTok were recruited to promote Georgescu directly by publicly supporting him and indirectly through neutral messages that contained labels associated with him, and fake accounts were created to falsely represent institutions of the Romanian state. These fake accounts had supportive posts for Georgescu, presenting the false notion that these state institutions supported him. Georgescu’s posts were also not marked as belonging to a political candidate, which favoured their mass dissemination. Romania’s intelligence services also hinted that large sums of money would have been spent as part of this operation, contradicting Georgescu’s claims that he spent nothing on his campaign.

While the role of the president is largely symbolic in Romania, if Georgescu had won the elections on 8 December, he would have had considerable influence on areas such as foreign policy, and is likely to have benefitted from significant support in Romania’s parliament. Following the 1 December parliamentary election, the far-right currently represents the biggest bloc in the parliament, with AUR, the extreme-right SOS Romania party and the recently founded Party of Young People (POT) having won a combined 32% of the seats. The ruling Social Democrats (PSD) came in first with 23% of the votes, but cannot govern without the support of two other parties, the ideal scenario being that it forms a pro-Western coalition with the National Liberal Party (PNL) and the Save Romania Union (USR) for 52% of the seats. USR, however, holds itself as an anti-establishment and anti-corruption party, critical of both the PSD- and the PNL-led governments, which means they are likely to find it difficult to govern with parties they see as the opposition. A far-right majority, however, is a dangerous prospect regardless of the eventual outcome of the presidential elections – and one that all pro-Western parties would do well to avoid.

Russian interference in national elections is intensifying, but so is political and popular resistance to it. Recent events in Moldova, Georgia and Romania show that forces to counter the effects of this interference exist, but also that national systems continue to have vulnerabilities that can be easily exploited. The battle ahead is a difficult one in the current economic, social, political and international circumstances – and especially in these circumstances, the hope for a brighter future has to be stronger than the draw towards a misremembered past.

Image: Voting in a Moldovan polling station on 20 October (Source: Parlamentul Republicii Moldova via C0 0.1 UNIVERSAL)

About Irena Baboi

Irena Baboi is a PhD candidate at the University of Glasgow, researching the future of European Union involvement in the Western Balkans. She also obtained both of her previous degrees from the same university, having completed an MA in Politics and Central and East European Studies and an MSc in Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies. Irena’s previous work experience includes internships with AKE Intelligence Group in London, as well as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and United Nations Information Centre in her hometown of Bucharest, Romania, fundraising for Macmillan Cancer Support, freelance writing and editing for Oxford University Press. She has also been a volunteer with the British Red Cross since 2013. Irena’s research interests include human rights, peacebuilding and statebuilding, conflict prevention, management and resolution, transitional justice, and post-conflict development.