October 3, 2025 | Foreign Policy
Europe Should Support Moldova Against Russian Meddling
Defeating Russian interference in Moldova’s election is merely the first step.
October 3, 2025 | Foreign Policy
Europe Should Support Moldova Against Russian Meddling
Defeating Russian interference in Moldova’s election is merely the first step.
Excerpt
Moldova’s pro-Western governing party gained a clear parliamentary majority in this weekend’s elections, choosing European alignment amid “unprecedented pressure, disinformation, and interference from the Kremlin.” Although the results advance Moldova’s EU integration path and deliver a short-term blow to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s hybrid warfare, the struggle is not over.
Moldova has become a geopolitical battleground between Russia and the West, and Putin will continue his efforts to influence it. As former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill might say, when it comes to Russia’s latest chapter of meddling, Moldova’s election is “only the end of the beginning.”
Ivana Stradner, a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) where Mark Montgomery serves as senior director of FDD’s Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation (CCTI) and as an FDD senior fellow.