GJIA: In your own words, could you provide a brief overview of Moldova’s current geopolitical position between the European Union and Russia?
Kelly Keiderling: Moldova gained independence in 1991 when the Soviet Union fell, and naturally, there has since been heavy Russian influence in Moldova and its politics in particular. Over the years, we’ve seen Russian influence shift from very, very influential to much less so.
In the first fifteen years following independence, Moldova’s presidents, Prime Ministers, and other political leaders were very attentive to Russian concerns and then over time, for many reasons, became less so. In the 2010s, political leaders became ever more interested in benefiting themselves, rather than focusing on nationwide policies that would benefit the population in general.
So, with their majority win in the July 2021 parliamentary elections, the Party of Action and Solidarity (PAS), led by President Maia Sandu, was able to form a government on its own, without needing the votes of partners in parliament. Since then, President Sandu and PAS have been able to consolidate Moldova’s foreign and governing policies in a way that was much more independent of Russia’s desires and much more “self-standing”—translating from the Russian term “самостоятельный” used to describe this position.
Since Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine started, the Moldovan government and many of the Moldovan people have turned further away from Russia in general and away from President Putin and his policies in particular. Russia, of course, does not like this and has done everything possible to undermine Moldova’s elections. In the last couple years, Moldova held local elections, last year’s presidential elections, and this year’s parliamentary elections, and in each of those electoral cycles, the Kremlin was doing everything possible to limit or to manipulate Moldovans’ own decision-making, their choice of where they want to go in the future.
GJIA: How would you describe the significance of Moldova’s 2025 parliamentary elections, particularly PAS’s ability to withstand Russian election interference?
KK: Russian tactics of “hybrid war” have been going on for at least two years now. For example, in the most recent elections, Moldova faced strong headwinds from Russia against the Moldovan people’s ability to have their “one voice, one vote” system and cast ballots, independently, and based on good sources of information, for the party that they wanted. Russia has used these similar mechanisms to try to undermine Moldova’s past presidential and local elections, too.
The significance is that, notwithstanding Russia’s pressure against Moldovan free and fair elections, the Moldovan people, Moldovan systems, and the Moldovan government were able to withstand this attack from Moscow. They voted in an election that the OSCE’s Office of Democratic Initiatives and Human Rights (ODIHR) determined was pretty well conducted. (I’m a big fan of ODIHR, and I think it has one of the best election-monitoring methodologies in the world.)
We have seen a maturing, strengthening, and consolidation of Moldovan governmental and electoral systems, evident in the Moldovan public’s ability to (mostly, although not yet fully) withstand a polluted information environment, much of which comes from Russia. These parliamentary elections showed that Moldovan ability to withstand Putin’s underhanded efforts again, as Moldovans did for the presidential elections last year. Last year, during Moldova’s electoral season, we also saw a lot of “hybrid war” actions from Russia to pollute the info-space, cast doubt on electoral mechanisms, and buy votes to undermine the legitimacy and authenticity of the vote, of people’s voices being expressed in the vote. Even in the face of strong counter-pressures by Russia, these elections were held well, mostly in accordance with international (ODIHR) standards.
GJIA: You mentioned a “consolidation” of Moldova’s democracy. To what extent can these most recent elections, among prior elections, be read as such?
KK: Let me define democracy a little bit more precisely, because it’s such a broad term. Democracy is, at its core, defined by elections—in that the people decide how they’re going to be governed. Of course, the day of the vote itself does not define the quality of elections; you need to factor in what happens the days before voting day and the days after elections. Democracy also includes an independent judiciary, free and plural voices in the media, and a legislature which reflects the shifting preferences of voters, not just one snapshot during election. For a strong democracy, you also should factor in the executive’s appropriate use of the tools of governance to advance the well-being of the country and the needs of the people and not to use tools of governance against the people. A democratic system needs a robust civil society, too.
Using these components of democracy, we can indeed say that Moldova’s democratic institutions and governance have improved over the years. There’s no question about that. For many, many years, the political and economic leaders of Moldova really focused more on their own desires. That level of corruption came to a head with Plahotniuc and his network at the end of the 2010s. Since then, we can say that Moldova’s democracy has strengthened greatly, and we have to give President Sandu and her people credit. Since July of 2021, she and her party and her government have been focused on fighting back, specifically against corruption. So, I would argue Moldova’s democracy is a well-consolidated democracy today, not perfect, of course, but mostly functioning to give people choices of how they want to be governed.
GJIA: Would you argue Moldova’s democratic consolidation is still contingent on external support from the EU and other allies?
KK: Yes. Those of us on the outside will need to keep encouraging the parliament to pass good laws, and the executive to continue the fight against corruption and in favor of rule of law. We, from the outside, should also continue to encourage Moldova to improve social cohesion. The executive in the last four years has not spent much time trying to bring together the different ethnolinguistic groups of the country. Continuing support from ODIHR and other bodies to observe elections will also be needed. Support for democracy in terms of election observation, and training law enforcement and border security officials to properly safeguard Moldova’s borders, and training for the electorate to spot and discount mis- and disinformation—these international efforts should still continue.
GJIA: Why does Moldova, at least in these recent elections, break from a trend of growing public support for the far right, populist leaders in Europe?
KK: Populism has had a somewhat different shade in Moldova than it has in other parts of Europe and the world. Like populism around the world, populism in Moldova has made this emotional appeal to the people against the elites. In fact, in recent elections like the presidential elections last year, there was a populist leader, Renato Usatii, who was twice mayor of Bălți (the biggest city in northern Moldova). Last year in the presidential elections, he won almost 14% of the vote. He has his own party, called Our Party. 14% of the vote is nothing to scoff at. Now this year, Usatii’s party in the parliamentary elections won about 6% of the vote. His party gained six seats in a 101-seat parliament. That also may not sound like a lot, but it is a definitive presence, especially when you’re looking to make parliamentary coalitions, which are needed to pass laws. So, populism in Moldova has certainly existed, but I would say that it’s not at the intensity of populism elsewhere in Europe.
Moldovan politics from 1991 have been characterized by political and business leaders making decisions to benefit themselves. For many years in Moldova, the electorate has generally been resistant to and suspicious of those political and economic elites. There has been a feeling that “the elites are leaving me out of the democratic equation.” If we’re defining populism, at least in Moldova, as an anti-elite sentiment, that populist feeling has existed in Moldova for a long time. So, somebody like Usatii certainly gets a percentage of the vote. But because populism in Moldova—rejection of elites—is not only a recent phenomenon, we have not seen as large a snowballing effect of populism as elsewhere in Europe. The Moldovan public for many years has not liked the elites very much.
GJIA: How decisive were these election results in reinforcing Moldova’s trajectory towards potentially EU membership, particularly last year with the 2024 constitutional referendum?
KK: I would say very decisive. Let’s say that before the elections we had three scenarios in which Moldova’s future was heading: towards the EU; towards a great, big partnership with Russia; or a kind of in-the-middle approach where we go back to the old, more elite-centered politics of earlier times. These parliamentary elections put Moldova firmly on the path to EU membership, as the future that the majority of Moldovans want. They were quite decisive. It’s not just a single year’s worth of voting either. It’s now two years where a majority—yes, a very slight majority of 50% plus one—but nevertheless a majority, in which Moldovans clearly stood in opposition to a lot of those strong winds from Russia. What the Moldovan electorate selected was not just the EU in its future, but a decisive striding towards the EU as fast as humanly and governmentally possible in a short period of time. So, for me, decisiveness also functions in that way. It was not just a vague “of course, we want the benefits of the EU,” but a decision: “We want to be a member of the EU, and we want it fast.”
. . .
Kelly Keiderling served in the U.S. Foreign Service for 37 years, as U.S. Ambassador to Uruguay, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs, foreign affairs advisor to the U.S. Vice President, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Educational and Cultural Affairs, and on various diplomatic missions in Latin America, former Soviet states, and Africa. She was Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Moldova from 2006 to 2009. Most recently, she led the OSCE’s Mission to Moldova, where she was the primary mediator in negotiations between Chisinau and Tiraspol officials in the OSCE’s Transnistria Settlement Process. Currently, Amb. Keiderling is a fellow at Harvard University’s Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies and at Harvard’s Advanced Leadership Initiative. She received her bachelor’s degree from Georgetown University and her master’s degree from the U.S. National War College.
This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity and length.
Interview conducted by Chloe Taft and Sid Mehrotra.
Image Credit: Sasha Pleshco, Unsplash Content License, via Unsplash.
