By Andrew Higgins
A referendum in Moldova intended to put an end to decades of swerving between East and West yielded a microscopic win Monday for voters who favor amending the constitution to lock in alignment with Europe rather than Russia.
The result of the referendum held Sunday was so tight, and the mandate for an irreversible path to Europe so thin, that Moldova, a former Soviet Republic and one of Europe’s poorest countries, looked stuck in a mire of uncertainty over its direction.
The referendum has been closely watched by Russia, the European Union and the United States. The results highlighted the deep divisions found in many formerly Soviet lands — divisions that Russia has labored to widen and, in the case of Ukraine, Moldova’s neighbor to the east, exploited to set the stage for its full-scale military invasion in February 2022.
Moldova’s firmly pro-Western president, Maia Sandu, finished far ahead of 10 rival candidates in an election that was also held Sunday but she did not win the majority needed to avoid a runoff vote on Nov. 3.
In a statement Monday afternoon, she declared victory “in an unfair fight” but warned that “we can only prevent disaster” if voters turned out for the runoff.
Despite a slew of advance opinion polls showing that a substantial majority wanted to break out of Russia’s orbit of influence, near-final results announced Monday afternoon by the central electoral commission gave the “Yes” vote 50.46% against 49.54% for “No.”
With 99.8% of ballots counted, voters narrowly approved proposed amendments enshrining the “irreversibility” of Moldova’s “European course.”
Also approved was a declaration in the constitution fixing future membership of the European bloc as the “strategic direction” of a country plagued by an exodus of young people seeking work abroad, mostly in Western Europe.
But it was far from the emphatic win hoped for by Sandu and her backers in the European Union and the United States.
The closeness of the outcome was such a shock that Vitalie Cojocari, a Moldovan journalist with a pro-European television station in Romania, compared it to Britain’s surprise vote in 2016 to leave the European Union. In both countries, he said, the “power of the silent” — voters whose views rarely penetrate a bubble of optimism over Europe — revealed itself at the ballot box.
In more encouraging news for Moldova’s pro-Europe camp, Sandu won 42% of the vote in her bid for reelection. Her closest rival, Alexandr Stoianoglo, a former prosecutor general who is under investigation for corruption, drew 26%.
Marcel Ciolacu, the prime minister of neighboring Romania, a member of NATO and the European Union, said it was imperative that Sandu win the runoff against Stoianoglo to make “it increasingly clear” that Russia’s “flame will go out for good in Chisinau!”
Putting a brave face on the narrow referendum win, he sent “congratulations to all Moldovan citizens who have resisted the incredible pressures from Moscow and managed to lead their country to the better side of history.”
Russia, the European Union and Sandu all cried foul Monday. The Kremlin, disappointed that the “No” camp did not win — as early results Sunday indicated it might — complained of a “hard to explain” surge of “Yes” votes late in the count and of ballots for Sandu. The reason for that, however, was that the counting turned late to ballots cast by Moldovans living outside the country, who tend to be younger and more in favor of Europe than Russia.
Moldova had a population of more than 4 million when it became an independent state with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. It currently has a population of fewer than 3 million but the exact number is not clear because so many people, despairing over their country’s prospects, have emigrated abroad for work but still declare residency in Moldova.
Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the EU’s executive arm in Brussels, presented the slim referendum victory as evidence that “despite Russia’s hybrid tactics,” Moldova “is strong and it wants a European future.”
Sandu, in an overnight post on the social platform X, said that “criminal groups” and “foreign forces hostile to our national interest” had used “the most disgraceful means to keep our nation trapped in uncertainty and instability.”
Together, she said, they “have attacked our country with tens of millions of euros, lies, and propaganda.”
Before the referendum and presidential votes Sunday, Russia conducted a widespread campaign of disinformation and bribery to turn people away from Europe, according to officials in Moldova, the United States and the European Union.
The anti-EU campaign was openly spearheaded from Moscow by Ilan Shor, a fugitive billionaire and convicted fraudster from Moldova. Shor, Moldovan officials said, flooded his home country with illicit cash transfers to buy votes and financed a wave of disinformation on social media. Much of that involved warnings that the European Union wanted to brainwash children into turning gay or transgender, exploiting a homophobia that is widespread in many former Soviet countries.
In a message on the eve of voting on X, the only major social platform from which he has not been evicted, Shor described Sunday’s vote as “our last chance” to keep Moldova out of the European Union and protect it from what he has repeatedly derided as a mortal threat to Moldovan values and sovereignty.
As an independent state next to Ukraine that emerged from the ruins of the Soviet Union, Moldova has been tugged between East and West for decades, veering between leaders who want to align with Russia and others, like Sandu, who favored the West. In June the government began membership negotiations with the European Union.
Eager to rally support for Sandu and her referendum gamble, the United States and the European Union have offered economic support to Moldova, including a package worth about $2 billion announced this month.
Russia has deployed less transparent methods in its efforts to influence voting, focused on mobilizing hostility toward Sandu and the West among the substantial minority of the population that sees Moscow as a more reliable partner.
Moldova’s potential admission to the European bloc is still many years away, but it has been accelerated by alarm in Western capitals over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and a new determination to prevent Moscow from advancing into other former Soviet territories.
Three Baltic states that were once part of the Soviet empire — Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia — were admitted into the European Union and NATO 20 years ago, a shift that anchored them firmly in the West and helped curb Russian ambitions to return them to rule by Moscow.
In response to the war in Ukraine, the European Commission, the bloc’s executive arm, recommended in June 2022 that Moldova and Ukraine be granted “candidate status,” the first formal step in a process that normally lasts longer than a decade. Georgia was deemed not ready for that status.
Comments