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Moldova’s pro-European authorities said Russian meddling extended to millions of euros in payoffs to voters. If proven, Europe needs to prepare for the Kremlin’s interference playbook to be used elsewhere.
Moldova’s President Maia Sandu described it as a “fraud of unprecedented scale” that was “intended to spread fear and panic in the society” and revert the country’s pro-European course.
Security officials privately admit that the country could have been used as a sort of ‘testing ground’ for its future activities.
They and other experts fear that what happens in Moldova can be used as a broader playbook for Georgia, Armenia, and others; Russia can test what works, what doesn’t, and what export is elsewhere.
Georgia is widely seen as another such example. Citizens are expected to vote next Saturday (26 October) in a watershed parliamentary election, which is in some way a showcase of what Russia can do if left unchecked.
According to recent media investigations, Russian spies were watching the country’s government and major companies in a comprehensive espionage and hacking campaign over the years, scooping up information and gaining powers to potentially sabotage critical infrastructure.
If this is all true, the Russian effort has come to fruition recently, while Georgians celebrated last year being granted official EU candidate status, by this summer, Brussels was forced to de facto freeze the process over the government’s Russia turn.
Next week, a first-ever union of all pro-Western opposition forces will face off against the country’s Georgian Dream ruling party, accused of democratic backsliding and increasingly shifting towards Moscow, but have little chance of success.
In both cases – Moldova and Georgia – though in different advanced stages, a massive Russian disinformation and propaganda campaign was used to create a feeling of instability and threat among citizens, discrediting the West as a ‘warmongering’ party and ‘heaven of societal instability’.
The Spiel worked with the more rural, poorer part of society, one that is hard to reach for soft-spoken Western diplomats.
For Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, what has not worked by force in Ukraine, which arguably bears a very high financial cost, can now be done cheaper and more effectively in covert ways.
However, Russia’s hybrid methods are not fully applicable and translatable to just any country.
Cash-for-votes schemes arguably work better in poorer countries, with a more vulnerable rural population, where a €50 bribe works better than billions spent on sophisticated social media campaigns.
The sheer amount of money that would be needed to be invested in a Western European country would be significantly higher in relation to the standard of living and less workable for Moscow.
However, the fact that it seemingly worked in Moldova raises a fundamental question for the EU.
European leaders, distracted by Russia’s war in Ukraine and a burning Middle East, have only marginally looked closer at what is going on in their nearby neighbourhood.
Bluntly speaking, if there are physically no ‘Russians at the gates’, hybrid threats have been addressed as a problem but remained a lesser concern.
The price, it turns out, is being as so often paid in the long term, when the next decisive election comes around the corner where EU ties are on the ballot.
It is true that for the EU, it remains a thin line between not wanting to interfere in a third country’s electoral processes and offensively communicating the benefits of EU integration and voicing some tough love early on to EU candidate country authorities if they don’t abide by EU values.
But it needs to become better at StratCom if it wants to take out the oxygen of Russia’s narratives that run contrary to Europe’s interests.
The Roundup
With votes counted from Moldovans voting abroad, the country voted in favour of anchoring EU membership in its constitution by a slim margin, updated electoral data showed on Monday (21 October).
The European Commission has drafted a list of several flagship defence projects that could be turned into EU defence projects of common interest and benefit from the tabled €500 billion financial envelope.
During a visit to Turkey over the weekend, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz promised more defence exports to the country, as Ankara’s geopolitical importance has seen German defence sales to Turkey bounce back.
Bulgarians will head to the polls on 27 October for the seventh parliamentary election in three and a half years, but there is little hope that the country’s deep political crisis will end with the formation of a stable government.
The chief economist of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has warned that an ongoing surge of electric vehicles (EVs) from China, coupled with decreased demand for internal combustion engines, is dividing Europe into countries that benefit from it and those that do not. At the UN Biodiversity Conference, which starts today (21 October) in Colombia, countries seek to reach the necessary agreement to deliver on their nature protection pledges. The UK, Italy and Japan agreed to speed up a project to produce the next generation of fighter jets on Sunday (20 October), in a move that signals political support for the programme from the new British and Japanese governments. Europe’s unspoken plan to decarbonise aviation. Local noise and congestion concerns are leading to caps and even reductions in airport capacity across Europe. Authorities seem content to let it happen.
Look out for
- EU ministers will meet for an agriculture and fisheries council meeting in Luxembourg.
- The various political groups in the European Parliament will hold press briefings outlining their priorities for the plenary session in Strasbourg, France.
- The European Commission will hold its weekly college meeting in Brussels, Belgium.
- Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) will debate establishing the Ukraine Loan Cooperation Mechanism and providing exceptional macro-financial assistance.
- Other topics MEPs are expected to debate include; an urgent need for a ceasefire in Lebanon and safeguarding the UNIFIL mission, the general EU budget for 2025, protecting journalists reporting on the Ukrainian War, agriculture sanitary issues, EU employment policies, Azerbaijan’s violation of human rights and relations with Armenia, China’s military provocations to Taiwan, state-sponsored terrorism by Iran, and the political situation in Tunisia.
[Edited by Rajnish Singh]
Source: euractiv.com
