The Kremlin is trying to influence the upcoming Moldovan parliamentary elections on September 28, 2025, as it tried with Moldova’s presidential election and referendum about EU integration in Fall 2024. These election influence campaigns are part of Moscow’s overall efforts to achieve its long-held strategic objective of preventing Moldova from integrating into the West. The Kremlin learns critical lessons each time it leverages election cycles to pursue this objective, and Moscow is adapting its previous efforts to influence Moldovan elections while also implementing tactics it has employed against Ukraine, Georgia, and Romania. The pro-Western Party of Action and Solidarity (PAS) currently holds the majority in the Moldovan Parliament, and the Kremlin is supporting various electoral blocs in order to deprive PAS of its majority. A Kremlin-friendly Moldovan Parliament would be able to undo many of the efforts Chisinau has successfully pursued in recent years on its path toward Western integration. The Kremlin may aim to use such a parliament to pass laws that would exploit the neutrality clause in the Moldovan Constitution to prevent Moldova’s military cooperation with NATO and NATO states or to pass a foreign agents law to derail Moldova’s EU accession process.
Russia Continues Efforts to Regain Influence over Moldova | Institute for the Study of War
