Russia ‘offering cash for votes to skew Moldova’s EU referendum’

Poll to amend country’s constitution to join bloc passes by paper-thin majority despite predictions of comfortable victory

Russia has been accused of offering cash for votes in Moldova to skew a referendum on joining the EU.
The vote on Sunday to change Moldova’s constitution to join the EU was only passed by a paper-thin majority of 50.03 per cent, despite predictions of a comfortable victory.
Maia Sandu, the Moldovan president, blamed “foreign forces” for nearly ruining her lifetime ambition of taking former Soviet Moldova into the EU.
“Criminal groups, working together with foreign forces hostile to our national interests, have attacked our country with tens of millions of euros, lies and propaganda,” she said at a press conference in Chisinau, the Moldovan capital.
Although Ms Sandu did not directly reference Russia, the European Parliament, the Moldova security services and the US all warned that the Kremlin was meddling in the referendum and a presidential election, held at the same time.
On Monday, the EU said that there was evidence of “unprecedented interference”. Moscow has denied the claims.
On Monday, the Kremlin alleged there were “anomalies” in Moldova’s count in the election for president and a referendum on joining the EU, and said the country’s president must “prove” election interference claims.
Flanked by Romania and war-stricken Ukraine, Moldova has alternated between pro-Western and pro-Russian courses since the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Ties with Moscow have deteriorated under Ms Sandu who has championed EU integration. Her administration has condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, accused Russia of plotting her overthrow, and diversified energy supply after Russia reduced gas supplies. Russia has accused Ms Sandu’s government of Russophobia.
Sunday’s referendum sought to decide whether to insert a clause into the constitution defining EU accession as a goal.
Earlier in October, the EU Parliament passed a motion warning of “Russian attempts to derail Molodova’s pro-European trajectory” after Moldovan security services said that the Kremlin had spent £83 million on propaganda and bribing people for up to 300,000 votes. Moldova has a population of three million people.
In the days before the election, customs officers seized bundles of cash being carried into Moldova by people travelling back from Russia.
“Almost everyone had money: 2,000, 3,000, 7,000 euros,” the head of customs at Chisinau Airport, Ruslan Alexandrov, told the BBC. “Normally people don’t come in with that much money. Not from Moscow.”
One voter told the broadcaster that they had been offered 1,000 roubles in cash to vote, and had travelled from pro-Russian Transnistria to cast a ballot with four other people.
The bribery allegations focus on Ilan Shor, a pro-Kremlin oligarch who fled to Russia from Moldova in 2019 after being accused of money laundering and embezzlement. He still retains patronage through his networks in Moldova.
This assessment was echoed by the US.
“Moscow has dedicated millions of dollars to influencing Moldova’s presidential election,” said John Kirby, the US national security spokesman.
Despite new laws imposing tough penalties for selling votes, poor pensioners or people living in rural communities who feel disenfranchised from the “Chisinau set” are vulnerable to pressure to sell their votes.
Moldova is Europe’s poorest country and is wedged between Ukraine and Romania. It applied to join the EU in 2022 after the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine.
Ms Sandu also only won 42 per cent of the vote in a presidential election that she had been expecting to win outright. Her main contender is a former prosecutor backed by pro-Russia parties, who won 26 per cent of the vote.
Analysts said that Ms Sandu would face a tough contest in the second round and that her failure to comprehensively win the pro-EU referendum was a blow to her authority.
“It weakens the pro-European image of the population and the leadership of Maia Sandu,” said Florent Parmentier, a political scientist at the Paris-based Sciences Po.