Moldova has been in the Kremlin’s crosshairs for a long time. Economic pressure, energy blackmail, staged protests, and generally polluting the information environment are some of the elements in the Kremlin’s playbook to destabilise Moldova and sabotage the country’s accelerating EU path.
Pirates on board
At the beginning of summer, Moldovans watching pirated movies on shady websites discovered, among the usual advertising, a nice looking video promoting a ‘military-patriotic’ summer camp for children in Moldova. The clip stated that the Moldovan Ministry of Education would organise the camp with the support of the EU. Pupils would be trained to use weapons.
The usual pro-Russian media and Telegram channels did not share the video. Still, a spokesperson of the Moldovan government stated swiftly that the message was false. The Ministry of Education published a press release saying no ‘military patriotic camps’ were being organised. The EU ambassador to the Republic of Moldova debunked the message as well.
Why now?
Such incidents are expected to become ever more frequent as the country enters a crucial campaign period. Moldova will hold presidential elections and an EU accession referendum on 20 October 2024. Next year, parliamentary elections will take place.
The current, pro-European head of state, Maia Sandu, will seek re-election. People will express their views on whether they want their country to join the EU. It can be expected, then, that Moscow will further intensify its already intense campaigns of disinformation and manipulation. For Russia, the country is a genuine information battlefield.
The Kremlin and its proxies have been increasing their attacks on growing EU-Moldova cooperation and the EU’s support for Moldova’s resilience, falsely labelling it as a ‘sign of the country’s militarisation’. According to the Watchdog.md community, the narrative that ‘EU integration would drag Moldova into the [Ukraine] war’ accounted for 10% of the hostile narratives spotted in the first weeks of May in the Moldovan information space.
This narrative is also spread from Moscow. Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Maria Zakharova showed concern that the birth rate in Moldova is declining because ‘men have to participate in military training alongside American and Romanian soldiers’.
Tax on remittances and inclusivity as a weapon
Around the same time, the Newsmaker.md website wrote that its readers reported that another video, run as advertising on pirated movies platforms, claimed that Moldova will introduce a new 10% ‘patriotic’ tax on remittances to be used to cover the budget deficit. Once again, the Moldovan government spokesperson stated that the video has nothing to do with reality.
A few days later, shortly before the Chisinau Pride 2024 event held on 16 June, a third video started interrupting pirated movies on the same platform. This time, the advertisement claimed that the Ministry of Education is promoting ‘inclusiveness’ in schools. In this case, using the notion of ‘inclusiveness’ was an evident attempt to exploit homophobia to try to discredit Moldovan authorities. The Ministry of Education refuted the information, urging citizens to inform themselves from official sources.
The claim that ‘the EU would oblige Moldova to legalize LGBTQI+’ is one of the biggest disinformation narratives used by pro-Kremlin forces in Moldova. Another false claim also gaining traction alleges that ‘the EU is dragging Moldova into the [Ukraine] war’.
So, what is new?
The three videos published in May-June are of a high technical quality. They are labelled with emblems of the Ministry of Education, a trick intended to mislead the audience.
The fact that they were distributed as advertising on pirated movies platforms indicates that they targeted a specific audience, mostly young people who are literate in English and information technologies but generally not interested in politics. The authors also tried to avoid popular social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram, which have started to block disinformation actors, and Telegram, for unclear reasons.
Usual tactics, usual suspects: emotional content and the ‘sleeper effect’
The experiments with technically high-quality videos and new platforms do not mean the end of ‘usual fakes’. Moldovan President Sandu was targeted in two videos recently. One that could be considered a ‘cheap-fake’ mocked Sandu’s double citizenship.
Another, higher-quality video presented an alleged statement by the President reimbursing all those who have fallen victim to scammers. The presidential administration stated that the video was false.
Pro-Kremlin actors flood the informational space with new posts every day. The Foreign Affairs Minister had to deny that Moldova would introduce visas for Russian citizens and the Ministry of Defence had to react to claims by Ilan Shor, the fugitive oligarch sentenced in absentia to 15 years in prison for fraud, that the Moldovan army will supposedly be subordinated to the Romanian Armed Forces. A long list of channels disseminated this disinformation narrative, as shown by Stopfals.md.
Pro-Moscow politicians are some of the influencers the Kremlin uses the most in Moldova. Mediacritica.md made a long list of political Tik-Tokers. Ilan Shor is a particularly significant figure. After relocating to Moscow, he launched a new political bloc of pro-Russian proxy parties and continued promoting the Kremlin’s disinformation narratives. They include: ‘the EU means war’, ‘[joining] the EU will destroy Moldovan agriculture’, ‘the EU will bring higher prices’, ‘the West controls the Moldovan government’, and, more recently, ‘NGOs are agents of foreign influence’.
Investigations are ongoing on cases of the illegal financing of Shor affiliates, and authorities are trying to cut financial flows from Russia. In one example, Moldovan border police seized around 1 million euro in cash carried from Moscow to Chisinau by Shor supporters as they returned from a congress held in Russia.
Through a constant flow of false or misleading information, the intent is to hijack the agenda or push public authorities onto the defensive. This technique also exploits the so-called ‘sleeper effect’ which aims to persuade target audiences even if the messages are known to be doubtful. See how this is used with emotional content in our article here.
Publicly visible synchronised efforts
A recent analysis by the WatchDog.md community reveals the organised nature of disinformation campaigns conducted by the Russian Federation. These campaigns involve the distribution of messages by Kremlin agents in Moldova, which are then picked up and broadcast by the spokesperson of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Maria Zakharova, or vice versa. The main objective of these campaigns is to sow distrust, fear, and anxiety among the population by suggesting that the pro-Western government is leading the country into war.
Various individuals, including former President Igor Dodon and Ilan Shor, have either endorsed or further reinforced these narratives. A network of Telegram channels, Tik-Tok accounts, web pages, and Russian media outlets has disseminated these messages widely. Fake mobilisation letters were also sent to reservists, protests were organised, and an alleged anti-war movement was launched.
On 13 June, the governments of the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom warned that the Kremlin is trying to interfere with the Moldovan presidential elections and the referendum on EU accession. ‘These Russian actors are actively using disinformation and propaganda online, on the air, and on the streets … [to agitate] criticism of the incumbent Moldovan President’s government and political party, in order to incite protests,’ the statement read. Meanwhile, EU leaders at the June European Council reconfirmed their continued support to strengthen Moldova’s resilience, security, and stability in the face of destabilising activities by Russia.
At the beginning of June, Ziarul de Garda noticed that the official Facebook and Instagram pages of Ilan Shor, under sanctions by the EU, the US, Canada and the UK, were blocked, as were the accounts of his close associates Marina Tauber, Evghenia Gutul, and Alexei Lungu. Meta mentioned that these accounts were considered as ‘dangerous persons or organizations’ after evaluating their ‘online and offline activities’.
Still, the expert community reported that Ilan Shor and another fugitive oligarch, Veaceslav Platon (sanctioned by Canada), have ramped up their disinformation efforts on social media. They spent 55,000 euro in June alone to spread messages like ‘Moldova is controlled by foreigners’ and ‘Russia should be Moldova’s strategic partner’.
And the less visible efforts
After Facebook closed the above profiles, dozens of other pages quickly opened. They included ‘Moldova Culturală Plus’ or ‘Moldova în Media’, which promote the same false narratives. For example, videos and posts have claimed that because Moldova has wanted to become an EU member, dozens of villages have disappeared, hundreds of schools have been closed, and the country has allegedly paid millions of euro into the EU budget over the last 10 years.
Social activist and artist Alex Buretz noticed an explosion of false profiles on Facebook with evidently foreign names. These profiles comment and share products by Shor and his team.
The Digital Forensic Research Lab, or DFRLab, at the Atlantic Council wrote that it identified 36 inauthentic Facebook pages promoting Ilan Shor’s anti-EU messages. Most of these pages have existed for some time. As the Moldovan elections have approached, they have changed their names almost simultaneously, adopting titles that suggest links with Moldova.
Some of these metamorphoses were indeed unexpected. For example, Fitness Fanatics Literary Lovers Creative Concepts became Acasa in Moldova (‘at home in Moldova’) and Green Living Creative Corner Local Love became Moldova Pioniera (‘Pioneer Moldova’) in November and December 2023, respectively.
The same happened with other more than 20 other pages between November 2023 and January 2024. According to DFRLab, on a day-to-day basis, these pages would share neutral content but then synchronise in distributing paid anti-EU campaigns. The usual narratives unsurprisingly claim that ‘the EU means war and fear’ and ‘the West is ruling Moldova’.
With the election and the referendum nearly three months away, there will be much more to come from the pro-Kremlin ecosystem in and around Moldova. It is also clear that the government and civil society will put much more effort into monitoring and debunking disinformation and in preventing different hybrid threats. We will follow these developments closely.
Article and pictures first time published on the EUvsDisinfo web page. Prepared for publication by volunteers from the Res Publica - The Center for Civil Resistance.
