Western leaders applauded as Moldova’s pro-EU party beat several pro-Kremlin opponents to victory in an election marred by allegations of Russian interference.
The ruling party secured more than 50 per cent of the vote, while the Russian-aligned outfit achieved less than 25 per cent. Moscow was charged with trying to sway the vote through widespread disinformation and vote-buying – allegations it denied.
But this isn’t the first time Vladimir Putin’s government has been accused of interfering in another country’s democracy: Russia was accused of helping to bring US president Donald Trump to power back in 2016; it’s been linked with attempted coups in Montenegro; and it’s even been connected to interference in the UK, such as the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko on British soil.
According to Dr Jon Roozenbeek, a lecturer in computational social psychology at the University of Cambridge and the author of Propaganda and Ideology in the Russian-Ukrainian War, Russia’s approach to interference stems from its “obsession” with managing the decline of its former empire.
“[Russia] simply will not allow countries that it considers to be in its sphere of influence to make their own decisions, roughly speaking,” he says, citing Putin’s close allies Kazakhstan and Belarus as two examples.
“The only ones that have managed to chart their own course are the countries that immediately joined the European bloc and Nato, which is to say the Baltic countries, as well as a lot of Eastern bloc countries that were never formally a part of the Soviet Union.”
But Eastern European countries are not the only ones at risk of interference, as it’s used as a tool by Russia in its fight to compete with Western powers.
Here, The Independent looks at what politicians mean when they refer to Russian interference – and how it works.
What is Russian interference?
Russian interference is described by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace as “a systematic strategy of undermining elections and influencing public opinion in the West”.
Its manifestations form a spectrum, and include violent intervention, sponsorship of political parties or politicians, propaganda and disinformation, and even bribery. Roozenbeek warns that Russia will do “anything they think will help them achieve their strategic goals, that they believe won’t backfire too badly”.
While it currently takes the form of outward support for far-right groups in Europe, and pushing anti-LGBT+ or anti-immigrant narratives, Roozenbeek says this is more about strategic thinking than “because they have some kind of ideological overlap”.
“Forty years ago, they were happy to support left-wing groups; their decision-making is about where they believe they currently have the most to gain. It has little to do with their actual ideological belief system, for example with regard to immigration and LGBT+ rights.”
What countries have experienced it?
A coup was allegedly planned to take place in the capital of Montenegro on 16 October 2016, the same day as the country’s parliamentary election. A year later, the leaders of the Montenegrin opposition and two alleged Russian intelligence agents were indicted in connection with the plot.
While the Russian government denied any involvement, the higher court found the accused guilty in 2019 of plotting to commit “terrorist acts” and to “undermine the constitutional order of Montenegro”. It was believed to have been a last-ditch attempt by the Montenegrin pro-Serbian and pro-Russian opposition to prevent the country’s accession to Nato.
Russia was also accused of interfering in the US elections in 2016, which saw Donald Trump installed in the White House.
A hacking and disinformation campaign reportedly took fabricated articles and disinformation from Russian government-controlled media and promoted them on social media, where they reached millions of users between 2013 and 2017. Moscow officials categorically denied interference. Republicans and right-wing commentators have referred to the investigations into White House collusion with Russian operatives as the “Russia hoax”.
More recently, in the UK, Nathan Gill, the former leader of the Welsh arm of the right-wing party Reform, pleaded guilty earlier this month to accepting bribes in exchange for making pro-Russian statements while he was a member of the European parliament.
Gill is understood to have had no involvement with Reform UK since 2021, and to have never formally been a member.
How is Russia believed to have interfered in Moldova’s 2025 elections?
As voters headed to polling stations to take part in Moldova’s parliamentary elections, claims of Kremlin interference swirled.
Moldova is a “special case” in Russia’s eyes, according to Roozenbeek. He says it is not dissimilar to Ukraine in that it contains a breakaway state called Transnistria that is already controlled by Moscow, though it’s recognised internationally as belonging to Moldova.
As such, Russia allegedly used a “broad” range of interference strategies in its approach to this parliamentary election, according to Roozenbeek, including “outright voter bribery”, sponsorship of political parties and political movements, and propaganda and disinformation.
The ruling pro-European Party of Action and Solidarity won 50.2 per cent of the vote, but found itself in competition with a number of pro-Russian parties, including the Patriotic Electoral Bloc and the populist Our Party.
The European Union Institute for Security Studies reported instances of vote-buying using cryptocurrency, as well as the use of AI to deploy deepfakes, chatbots and “media mimicries” to manipulate voters.
The EU DisinfoLab, a non-profit organisation, debunked several instances of disinformation in the media ahead of the election, which attempted to spread false narratives including that Europe was preparing to occupy Moldova, Russophobia was running rampant due to Western support, and the ruling party was planning illegal election interference to stay in power.
But while a wide range of strategies were allegedly used to influence the election, any potential interference ultimately failed.
“It’s not wise, in my view, to claim Russians are unmatched manipulators of the minds of the people,” Roozenbeek says. “They fail quite often.
“They just keep repeating the same narratives over and over, but it pisses people off fairly often, and it has a galvanising effect, to a degree, on public opinion,” he adds. “Sometimes it simply doesn’t work, like what happened here in Moldova.”
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