They had already done so on 28 September. But in Copenhagen on Thursday 2 October, at the Summit of the European Political Community, several EU leaders and the Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky, had the opportunity to congratulate the Moldovan President, Maia Sandu, on the victory of her pro-European PAS party in the parliamentary elections (see EUROPE 13719/15).
“These elections were very important”, commented the Ukrainian. “Europe has won, Moldova has won. (...) Now it’s time to move forward. Support for Moldova, Ukraine and the Western Balkans on the road to EU membership is crucial”, he added.
The Polish Prime Minister, Donald Tusk, had wanted to see a “spectacular example”. “Small Moldova can win against Russia”, he commented, despite the fact that the election was marred by attempts at destabilisation, as the Moldovan President herself reiterated during a public session.
“I think it’s very interesting for all of us to have your clear feedback and the lessons learned from this victory (...) because we are now faced with interference in all elections”, agreed French President Emmanuel Macron.
“Russia spent hundreds of millions of euros during the elections to illegally finance political parties. (...) Only in the last two years, they’ve created at least seven new political parties in Moldova”, recalled Maia Sandu.
But the country has drawn lessons “from all these attempts to destabilise the country, all these attempts to hire people on the ground, to produce disinformation” and has carried out “exposure and prevention work”.
The BBC “found a network of at least 90 TikTok accounts which produced thousands of videos with 23 million views for a population of 2.4 million people. We had many such examples”, she said.
And “after last year’s experience which was very dramatic during the referendum and the presidential elections, our institutions worked really, really well this time. They disrupted all these financial schemes of Russia. They confiscated the money, people who were dealing with this got arrested. (...) So the prevention was really, really useful”, added the president.
She said she was ready to share the small country’s experience and early expertise “with all the countries which are concerned that their elections might be under threat because of Russia”. If Moldova could do it, “then everybody can do it”. (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)