Each year Reporters Without Borders (RSF) publishes a global press freedom index that assesses nations on a 0 to 100 point scale - taking into account legal protections for journalists as well as other factors including intimidation and censorship. Countries are ranked and broadly grouped into 5 categories - “Good,” “Satisfactory,” “Problematic,” “Difficult” and “Very Serious.” The 2026 index is quite a warning - global press freedom is at a 25 year low. For the first time in the history of the index 50% of countries globally fall into the categories of “Difficult” or “Very Serious.”

In this time of retreat for freedom of speech and the press around the world, Moldova stands out as a rare good news story. The country climbed 4 places to rank at 31 globally. That puts Moldova as the only EU candidate country ranked as “Satisfactory” and the only country in the region with that rank - surpassing Ukraine (ranked 55), Romania (49), Bulgaria (71) and others.

The ranking puts Moldova in the middle of Europe and far ahead of the United States (64) which RSF notes is “experiencing a significant and prolonged decline in press freedom.”

Good Signals - But Still a Challenging Situation

In Moldova there is a sense of pride that the nation has managed to climb the ranking in a year that saw some of the most profound attacks on both the country’s information space and democracy as a whole. The fact that Moldova ranks higher than numerous EU member states and all EU candidates is rightly a point of pride and a real accomplishment in this context.

At the same time, Moldova’s independent press faces huge challenges. Marking the occasion ZdG writes:

“the free press operates in an increasingly complicated environment, marked by increasingly frequent misinformation, pressures, and limited resources”

These challenges - especially in the context of information warfare, were also highlighted by President Sandu’s statement on the day where she wrote:

“A democracy can endure only if there are courageous, fair, and dedicated journalists. On the occasion of International Press Freedom Day, I thank all media professionals in our country who, through their efforts, have contributed to strengthening resilience and defending democracy, in the face of unprecedented attacks on the Republic of Moldova’s right to decide its own future.

It is encouraging that the seriousness of our press is reflected in the evolution of the Press Freedom Index of the organization “Reporters Without Borders” (RSF), where our country has risen this year by four positions, reaching 31st place. We have thus achieved the best score among countries seeking accession to the European Union and are the only country in the region classified as “satisfactory.” However, there is still much work to be done, especially in countering increasingly sophisticated tools used to spread falsehoods and disinformation aimed at manipulating public opinion.

Freedom of expression cannot be equated with the freedom to spread lies, and protecting the truth remains a responsibility of society as a whole. To defend our values, it is essential to build strong cooperation between the press, institutions, and citizens—based on trust, mutual respect, and an unequivocal commitment to democracy and the common good.”

It is critical that Moldova’s free and independent press be strong enough to hold the government to account and to provide citizens with factual information in the context of Russia’s ongoing attacks on the country’s information space. Among the biggest challenges to this is what ZdG called “limited resources” - a turn of phrase that greatly understates the challenges that media organizations face.

In Moldova, the most sustainable independent media organizations rely on grants for around 70% of their operating budgets. Many smaller investigative or regional media outlets rely on grants for more than 97% of their budgets. The destruction of USAID and serious damage to the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) by DOGE in the United States removed core institutional funders in this space. In 2025 the European Union as well as member states rushed to fill these funding gaps in the context of Moldova’s elections.

This very needed support only highlighted how fragile the finance of Moldova’s independent press is. With global crises popping up almost weekly, there is no certainty that 2026 will see the same level of support. Long term, media organizations know that funding of this kind will fall greatly when Moldova joins the European Union and no longer has access to funding from development partners in the same way. This year’s RSF Press Freedom Index was a great sign of Moldova’s progress, but serious challenges remain.

How You Can Help

In 2025 I co-founded a US NGO (501c3) called the Moldova Resilience Fund (MRF) as a way to support independent media and civil society organizations that support Moldova’s democratic resilience.

Since launching in November, MRF has raised $39,800 from 43 donors and distributed $11,500 in flexible grants to local organizations. You can read a report on our activities in the MRF Q1 update on our website here.

While MRF is a new organization with an all volunteer executive board, we have been busy meeting with media organizations and NGOs in Moldova to figure out how a small player like us can have the biggest impact. Members of our team have also been meeting in the United States with diaspora groups and individuals who care about Moldova’s democratic future to discuss ways that they can get involved. Based on these discussions, we’ll be announcing more of our 2026 programming soon - if you want to stay in the loop sign up for our mailing list here.

Right now, the Moldova Resilience Fund is the only tax-deductible 501c3 organization in the United States that raises money specifically to support local organization in Moldova that provide fact based coverage of important events, conduct investigations and otherwise support the country’s civil society in these challenging times. If you find this cause important - consider making a donation to the Moldova Resilience Fund here:

Make a donation to MRF today

For US citizens or residents donating to a 501c3 like MRF is often the most convienent way to support a cause you believe in. But giving directly to local organizations that you want to support is also a really good option. On the MRF website we’ve compiled a list of some of the independent media organizations that we feel have the highest impact because of their fearless coverage and detailed investigations. MRF subscribes to these organizations on Patreon and shares the list to encourage those who want to make a monthly small dollar donation to do so directly - you can view our list as well as links for how you can support them here.

Other Ways to Help MRF

The Moldova Resilience Fund is a startup - and we’re always looking for dedicated people with out-of-the-box ideas for how we can be more effective. MRF will expand our board this year and we’re specifically looking for people with US non-profit experience willing to provide strategic advice - and for people with a background in providing on-the-ground support for independent media organizations in places like Moldova.

If you have ideas, want to get involved or otherwise want to reach out - drop me an email here:

david@moldovaresilience.org

Final Thoughts on World Press Freedom Day

As I reflected on the RSF index and what World Press Freedom Day means in 2026, my mind was drawn to the cascade of bad news we are getting from a world that keeps slipping deeper into crisis. These are truly unprecedented times - wars are spreading at the same time as social media pumps disinformation into our national and international discourse. This disinformation fuels the profits of social media companies at the same time as legitimate advertisers pull their placements with independent media in favor of facebook, YouTube and Tiktok. This is a vicious cycle that starves the free press of resources at the same time as it fuels disinformation.

Against this backdrop, we are also contending with a new age of AI that promises to fundamentally disrupt how we interact with information - with both positive and negative effects.

The role of independent journalists doing public interest reporting and investigations has never been more important. I’m not the sort of person who romanticizes this work - and I know that far too many journalists are not reporting without fear or favor and are themselves driving agendas. But I also know that the hard work that goes into uncovering the truth in a complicated world has a profound positive impact on our democracies. In Moldova, there is a vibrant free press that has made a huge impact in a time of hybrid war and democratic backsliding globally.

So for me, today is a day to honor those who do the work - but also to support them.

Sincerely,

David Smith

It was recently announced that the Republic of Moldova is joining the “Coalition of the Willing” for Ukraine. This is a development worth explaining more clearly both in terms of what it means and why it is a smart decision for our country.

First, in simple terms: the “Coalition of the Willing” brings together states that aim to support Ukraine. Most are European either members of the European Union, such as France, Germany, Romania, Poland, and Bulgaria, or non-EU countries like Norway and the United Kingdom. Some are NATO members, others are not. The group also includes key global partners such as Canada, Australia, and Japan.

The shared objective is clear: to build security guarantees for Ukraine once peace is achieved, ensuring that the country does not find itself in the same situation again. Why does this matter for us, in the Republic of Moldova? For several very concrete reasons.

First, there is the geopolitical dimension. Europe is taking on an increasingly prominent role in Ukraine’s security, and key decisions are being shaped within flexible formats such as this one. By participating, Moldova is present at the table where the future of the region, our region, is being discussed. We gain access to information, coordination, and real conversations on security. It is the difference between observing developments from the outside and actively shaping them. I support the latter approach.

Second, the Republic of Moldova brings real value. Our military are highly trained in demining. In post-war Ukraine, demining will be one of the most pressing challenges. This is about saving lives, restoring normalcy, and enabling reconstruction. Moldova can make a direct contribution here. We are not only participating, we are helping in practical terms.

A third element relates to technology, particularly drones. The war in Ukraine has demonstrated their importance. Drones are used not only for security purposes but also for agriculture, monitoring, and civil response. Through cooperation, Moldova can learn quickly, adopt best practices, and develop its own capabilities. This translates into stronger protection and better preparedness for the future. For a small country, this is a smart direction.

Fourth, this is about sovereignty. The Republic of Moldova is acting in line with its own interests and strategic documents. It is building its security step by step and deepening cooperation with Ukraine from training to defence industry cooperation and intelligence exchange. This reflects a mature and planned approach. Neutral countries such as Ireland and Austria are pursuing similar paths.

Finally, there is an economic dimension. Ukraine’s security has a direct impact on regional stability. A stable Ukraine means fewer risks for the Republic of Moldova across the economy, investment climate, and infrastructure. Participation in such formats also supports diversification and strengthens our international positioning. It forms the basis of a responsible foreign policy, promoted by the Presidency.

The decision itself is sound. The natural next step is to ensure broader public understanding within the country. The discussion on concrete actions should be brought into Parliament. Members of Parliament need to be clearly informed about the action plan and the next steps. This strengthens transparency and limits space for misinterpretation or manipulation, which has already surfaced in public discourse. Just as Moldovan military professionally defuses dangerous explosives and contributes to peace, political leaders and responsible institutions are called upon to communicate clearly and engage all parliamentary and extra-parliamentary forces in an open dialogue. This helps ensure that a beneficial decision for the country is properly understood by society.

The reasons are outlined above, but the broader point remains simple: the Republic of Moldova has chosen to be present where the region’s security is being discussed. It has chosen to contribute with what it does best, within its constitutional framework. That deserves to be explained more often.

Daniel Vodă is an Associated Senior Expert in foreign policy and strategic communication at the Institute for European Policies and Reforms (IPRE). He previously served as spokesperson for the Government and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and European Integration of the Republic of Moldova.

Some of my thoughts and memories about Moldova’s April 2009 protests which occurred in the immediate aftermath of the parliamentary elections.

I remember my lunch on April 5, 2009, because I never finished eating those crispy fried potatoes with pickled tomatoes. It was still Great Lent, ahead of Orthodox Easter on April 19th, during which my family observed a strict 49-day diet that excluded meat, dairy, and fish.

“Who did you vote for?” my mother asked.

To this day, after voting in four Moldovan and two Romanian elections, I have never had my family ask me that question. It has never quite been a topic of conversation in our family, not because it is a secret, but because there is a degree of trust in each other’s judgment. Election day has always been a huge event for my family. My mom has been a poll watcher for over a decade, likely since the 2011 local elections. I recall getting back from summer camp during the coldest rainstorm of June, waiting to see her because it was my first time away from home. She was running the mobile ballot box and stopped by for five minutes to hug me when she happened to be in the neighborhood. Equally, during the electoral season, we always gathered in front of the TV to watch the debates and interviews. As I grew up, I became increasingly impatient to vote. When I was 16, my Facebook post urging people to vote in the 2019 parliamentary elections went viral, with a few media outlets sharing it. I exercised my right to vote for the first time just hours before boarding my one-way flight to Canada, during the 2020 presidential election. But to this day, I can’t forget that bitter feeling, paralyzing my mouth, and the pit in my stomach, growing slowly as I lay there trying to sleep, while the TV was playing in the background, showing the election results.

“Why does it matter?” asked my grandmother.

My grandmother was born in the middle of World War II, when Moldova was already bleeding red. She would rarely talk about the Soviet Union, even when I asked her to. She spoke about the kolkhoz and the early-morning harvesting of tobacco leaves, the boarding school where she worked as a custodian and overnight guardian, and her unhappy marriage that left her grey-haired at 30.

My grandmother did not look up as my mother started scolding her. Whenever difficult conversations arose, she would stare into the distance, and after a while grow prickly, taking umbrage at every little thing. My mother, on the other hand, leaves the room when a conversation gets heated, to avoid saying something she might later regret. I found her on the stairs leading to our terrace, which opens onto the main street of our village. You could see anyone passing by, but also the grand forest unraveling across the long, stretching hills. I sat next to her for a while without saying anything. I was not angry at my grandmother, but I could understand my parents’ frustration.

The aftermath of those elections saw the most violent protests in Moldova’s history since gaining its independence. Like most of the countries in the Soviet Union, Moldova gained its independence without bloodshed. Between 1991 and 2009, it was only the casualties during the war in Transnistria in 1992 that represented a dark page in the country’s history.

The next day, there was fire on the TV. I remember seeing young faces and the police with their tall riot shields and nightsticks. To this day, I can’t quite stand the view of a cylindrical baton despite its purpose. I remember the fire. On the stairs of the Parliament Building and inside the Presidential Palace.

It all happened very quickly or, perhaps, incredibly slowly. Or maybe, all at once? After the Soviet Union collapsed, the Baltic states moved swiftly to rebuild their political and economic systems through lustration and shock therapy, overhauling everything at once rather than pursuing gradual reform. Moldova, like many other former Soviet republics, opted for a more gradual approach. That was mainly because the political system was largely inherited by the Old Guard, who clung to power. The Communist Party of the Republic of Moldova (PCRM), led by Vladimir Voronin, was one such example.

I thought about this as I was writing the date in my notebook at the beginning of my Post-Communist Transformations class. Coincidence or not, on April 7th, we covered the Color Revolutions and transitional justice. One of the assigned readings states that, in Moldova, “the ten years that politicians spent debating lustration, starting in 2000, allowed the communist elite to retain and convert its economic and political clout” (Vacroux 2018, 357). And memories started playing out before my eyes, moving through time, bringing me back to our black, box-shaped TV bought in 1996. I was 6 in April of 2009. But there is something about seeing a revolution for the first time that makes the memory untouchable. There is something about your parents’ fury and the red segment growing on the screen longer and longer as the Communist Party gains more and more votes.

PCRM had been in power since 2001. Moldova followed the pattern of a post-communist comeback, in which the old regime returned in the second or third election after independence, despite the initial victory of non-communist candidates. This has been the case in many former communist countries, such as Hungary, where the Hungarian Democratic Forum (MDF), led by József Antall, won the 1990 election. Still, four years later, the Hungarian Socialist Party (MSZP), the successor to the former ruling communist party, won an absolute majority, securing 209 of 386 seats. In 2001, PCRM secured 71 out of 101 seats in the Parliament. At that time, Moldova was a parliamentary republic in which the legislature elected the head of state. PCRM, holding the parliamentary majority, thus unilaterally elected Voronin as the president.

Communists maintained power in the 2005 elections as well, winning 45.98% of the vote and 56 seats. However, they fell short of the 61-seat supermajority required to elect the president on their own. Voronin was re-elected with the support of the Christian Democratic People’s Party (PPCD), which had been one of his more vocal opponents, the Democratic Party of Moldova (PDM), and the Social-Liberal Party (PSL). And on the night of April 5th to 6th of 2009, we went to bed knowing that the Central Electoral Commission (CEC) had counted enough votes to declare PCRM’s victory.

But the next morning, after CEC processed 96.51% of the tally sheets from polling stations, PCRM emerged with 49.94% of the vote and 60 seats, and young protesters began gathering in the Great National Assembly Square (Piața Marii Adunări Naționale), claiming the election was rigged and demanding a rerun.

The independent Moldovan newspaper Ziarul de Gardă reports that the message communicated online to bring people together was: “Young people declare April 7th a day of national mourning in the Republic of Moldova.” The political opposition also amplified this message, calling for a boycott of the election.

The protests started peacefully, with participants holding signs reading “Better dead than communist”, “Wake up, drugged homeland”, “No to election fraud”, “Down with the communist clan”. Thus, in the afternoon of April 7th, the central Chișinău saw at least 30,000 protesters rallying against the election results. As the day turned to evening, the protest grew increasingly violent.

The protesters first started throwing stones into the Parliamentary and Presidential buildings, which later escalated into full-scale fire as they stormed the buildings. Moldova’s PROTV’s coverage wrote about Voronin’s portraits being set on fire while the protesters chanted “Fight, Resist, I am anti-communist!”

While the protests turned violent with the destruction of state property, a young student, Dragoș Musteață, hoisted the European Union and Romanian flags on the Parliamentary and Presidential buildings. Later, he’d recall his act as one through which he wanted to signal that the buildings “belonged” to a European future rather than the communist regime, theoretically removing the incentive for protesters to vandalize them. The protests saw the Romanian (and EU) flags with a frequency perhaps last seen in the late 89s to early 90s, when the pan-Romanian movement gained incredible momentum.

In the evening, the Moldovan police fired rubber bullets at demonstrators in the Square to disperse them, also deploying tear gas and water cannons. Many protesters were also severely beaten by police. This escalated into intense altercations between police and protesters, with at least 193 demonstrators, mainly students, being detained. Seventeen years later, Marian Macovei, who was 32 at the time and ended up physically paralyzed in the following years as a result of the police brutality, would recall the basement of the Buiucani Police Station, where he was taken, as the “corridors of death.” Many of those detained suffered violent mistreatment while in police custody.

At the same time, the PCRM was busy pointing fingers at the political opposition, accusing the leaders of the Liberal Democratic Party, the Liberal Party, and the Our Moldova Alliance of organizing a “coup “ that formed a human shield of students, high school students, and pupils, whom they instigated to come to the square. But the blame did not stop at the Prut, as the Moldovan communists also accused Bucharest of attempted coup d’état, given the omnipresence of Romanian symbols during the protests. While the unionist movement that sought to merge Moldova and Romania together never quite disappeared, it most certainly weakened in the late 90s. The sudden resurgence of unionist sentiment added another pressure point for the communist regime. The communists moved swiftly: the Romanian Ambassador to Moldova, Filip Teodorescu, and counselor Ioan Gaborean were expelled, visas were reinstated for Romanian citizens, and Romanian journalists were denied entry into Moldova.

On the other hand, Voronin immediately called Moscow, which in turn called on the European Union and Romania to intervene and prevent what he described as threats to Moldova’s sovereignty. For Lavrov, who even 17 years ago was still Russia’s Foreign Affairs Minister, Romanian flags and Romanian slogans were being used as a “cover” to undermine Moldova’s sovereignty.

What happened to the political opposition that called Moldovans to take to the streets while comfortably shielded in their own residences? Vlad Filat, leader of the Liberal Democratic Party of Moldova (PLDM), served as the Prime Minister from 2009 to 2013, and was sentenced to 9 years in prison in 2016 for passive corruption. Nevertheless, Filat was released at the end of 2019 through a compensatory appeal, which was implemented to address human rights violations within the prison system. At the end of 2025, Filat was placed on an international wanted list following a French court’s money laundering conviction.

Another opposition figure was Mihai Ghimpu, leader of the Liberal Party (PL), who served as acting President of Moldova and President of the Parliament for a year after the protests. I grew up knowing Ghimpu as the most vocal supporter of reunification with Romania, but also as the uncle of Chișinău’s mayor at the time, Dorin Chirtoacă. Chirtoacă took over the PL’s leadership at the end of 2018; however, the PL never returned to Parliament after the 2019 elections.

Serafim Urecheanu is a name I have not heard in a long time, but in 2009, he led Our Moldova Alliance, which, a few years later, merged with Filat’s PLDM. At last, he pretty much vanished from Moldova’s political landscape. Marian Lupu is a name one won’t hear often these days, but back in 2005, he was elected as the President of the Parliament as a PCRM member. After calling the April protests “an attempted coup d’état” organized by the political opposition, Lupu became part of it, serving as Moldova’s interim president from 2010 to 2012. Today, Lupu is remembered mostly for his ties to Moldova’s oligarch, Vlad Plahotniuc, who chaired PDM for three years before fleeing Moldova in 2019.

These figures greatly benefited from the protests, gaining general support. For that time, they felt like a breath of fresh air, and that’s why young Moldovans took it to the Assembly Square. They successfully marketed themselves as the carriers of the “European dream” by positioning themselves against the outdated, intransigent, and, ultimately, morally corrupt communists. Perhaps their perceived legitimacy rested solely on this contrast because, after the protests were cracked down on and the CEC confirmed PCRM’s victory once again, Moldova entered a deep political crisis of polarization, leaving the country without a president for almost 3 years. Because the head of state required a 61-seat supermajority that the PCRM lacked, the Parliament was so divided that it failed to cooperate on electing a president.

Certainly, the stakes were incredibly high in the past two elections, in 2024 and 2025. However, looking back, I can’t quite think of an election that has marked Moldova more than April 2009. This is the closest Moldova came to a revolution. Some call the protests the Twitter Revolution because the protesters mobilized online, but also because it was a youth movement, and Twitter at the time stood for youthful innovation and breakthroughs, which the Moldovan opposition wanted to be associated with.

Yet the Twitter Revolution, if you will, is not regarded in Western scholarship as part of the chain of revolutions in former communist states, starting with Serbia’s Bulldozer Revolution in 2000 and continuing with the Orange Revolution and later the Revolution of Dignity in Ukraine, the Rose Revolution in Georgia, and the Tulip Revolution in Kyrgyzstan. If one insists on a narrow theoretical framework in which the label of “revolution” is granted only where there is some degree of continuity, Moldova’s April protests are not even considered part of the club of attempted revolutions that Azerbaijan (2005), Belarus (2006), and Russia (2011-12) share. I do find this omission significant because the protests’ organization, intentions, and consequences closely resemble those of a revolution. A revolution is typically led by a counter-elite, with high mass participation, occurring bottom-up, aiming at the fundamental transformation of the political class and the socio-economic system, and resulting in a new political class, new institutions, and new property relations (Lane 2009).

But I do not think the events of April 2009 represent a turning point in Moldova’s consciousness merely because they loosely fit the scholarly definition of revolution.

April 2009 was of paramount importance because it showed, and continues to show, that Moldova has not done its work on the transitional justice chapter. It is important to return to the fact that people mobilized following the alleged victory of the communists, a party that stands for so much suffering inflicted on Moldova. A party that brought not only a painful geopolitical rupture embodied by the USSR’s annexation of Moldova from Romania, but also a fracture in Moldova’s identity that remains difficult to reckon with. The Moldovan educational system is exceptional in the weight it places on the study of history, with particular attention to the Soviet Union and the damage it caused to Moldova through the Stalinist deportations, during which so many Romanian-Bessarabian families were callously persecuted and murdered, the demographic engineering, collectivization, and rapid industrialization, all of which have left deep legacies on the Moldova we live in today. And yes, victims of the communist regime are mourned and remembered. But transitional justice is two-dimensional: for it to be effective, perpetrators must also be punished and denounced. Today, this remains a difficult thing to do, mostly because a lot of time has passed.

Yet politicians proudly continue their careers wielding Soviet symbols, like the red star of the PSRM and the hammer and sickle of the PCRM. Moreover, they actively court Russia’s president, who, besides all the war crimes he is committing in Ukraine, wholeheartedly believes the dissolution of the USSR “was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.”

I think April 2009 marks the apogee of a contradiction in Moldovan national identity, which sought to resolve itself through the removal of the Communist Party. What complicates its aftermath is not the failure to achieve that aim, but the absence of meaningful and sustained reckoning with the violence and brutality of the protests. This left intact the same dynamic of the early post-communist years: victims are remembered, but few are held accountable. That unaddressed gap, I believe, is one of the many fault lines that run through Moldova’s identity. The first step to shrink this gap would be to fully declassify the files related to the April 2009 protests and continue the investigations into the gross human rights violations that occurred.

While the most immediate consequence of failing to deliver justice is the complete alienation of firsthand victims, the longer-term risk of leaving such trauma unaddressed is its diffusion into the broader public consciousness, which will fossilize over time into a collective victim mentality. A victim mentality at the national level manifests as learned helplessness, in which suffering becomes so central to a country’s self-understanding that it displaces agency. It is the difference between a nation that says “this was done to us” and one that also asks “what do we do about it.” Moldova has an abundance of the former and a deficit of the latter. Decades of deportations, forced collectivization, linguistic suppression, and political pressure by the Soviet Union and, later, Russia, have given Moldovans every reason to see themselves as a people acted upon rather than acting.

April has always been a particularly strange month for me. Running on cereals and bread during the last weeks of Great Lent, pruning the grapevines in our vineyard, planting potatoes and onions and garlic and everything else I can’t think of but that surely grows in my parents’ garden, and covering the tree trunks with slacked lime… And hoping, so desperately hoping, that the temperature will not drop overnight so the blossoming trees and the plants don’t freeze… And the air, saturated with pollen, grows stifling, the church bells ring and ring, and the swallows begin building their nests under the eaves of our house…

One of my favorite poems is T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land,” which opens with the line “April is the cruelest month.” Eliot’s wasteland is built on the ruins of World War I, where the cruelties of war emerge from the “forgetful snow” as it melts with the arrival of spring. The poem paints a blurry picture of loss, distortion, and disorientation: the tragedy has already occurred, yet the visceral, restless imagery conveys a sense of looming threat, as if the worst is still somehow ahead. I wonder whether we do something similar with April 2009 every time we return to it… whether memory, revisited enough times, becomes its own distortion. So much has happened in between, events that have reshaped how Moldovans see themselves and the world around them. But that feeling of something unresolved keeps haunting us, and maybe it grows a little stronger in April.

You can follow and subscribe to Cristina’s Substack newsletter here.

On 7 April 2009, in the Republic of Moldova, one could see perhaps for the first time so clearly the rupture between society’s democratic instinct and the reflexes of a system that had failed to understand that history had already moved in a different direction.

For many citizens, especially young people, that moment was one of political and moral awakening. It marked the emergence of a generation that no longer accepted fear, lies, or geopolitical captivity. In essence, it was a pro-European revolution, captured in a slogan well known across Europe: “Refuse! Resist! I am anti-communist.”

But it was also a stolen revolution. Not because the European idea disappeared - on the contrary, it endured and grew stronger. It was “stolen” because the energy of that moment was not translated quickly enough into a strategic reconstruction of the state.

We experienced alternations of power, grand speeches, and historic promises, but delayed the difficult decisions for too long: cleansing institutions, breaking away from toxic dependencies, exiting geopolitical ambiguity, addressing the banking fraud, and dismantling a captured state.

This is why, following last year’s decisive parliamentary elections, the year 2028 is no longer seen merely as a technical milestone in the EU negotiation calendar. It is a test of maturity and social cohesion.

The President of Finland, Alexander Stubb, put it simply and clearly: foreign policy rests on three pillars: values, interests, and power. For the Republic of Moldova, this formula says a great deal.

We clearly have values and interests. Our values are freedom, democracy, the rule of law, and human dignity. Our interests are peace, security, development, and accession to a space of prosperity governed by rules.

Power, in the hard sense of the word, is usually the privilege of larger actors. But this is precisely where the intelligence of a small state begins: the ability to turn cooperation into influence and diplomacy into relevance.

In this context, the recent vote by 60 Members of Parliament to withdraw from the core agreements of the CIS is a delayed but necessary strategic correction.

It is evident that we are not losing jobs by leaving the CIS. Moldova’s economy is already integrated with the European Union. Trade data shows that the EU is by far Moldova’s main trading partner: in 2025, around 67% of Moldovan exports went to the EU market, compared to just 4.5% to the CIS, of which only 1.5% went to Russia.

We are not losing markets. A healthy economy exports where there are rules, predictability, and respect for contracts. The wine and fruit embargoes, energy blackmail, and the use of trade as a political weapon have demonstrated the opposite.

Membership in the CIS has not protected us from Russian pressure, from ongoing cognitive warfare, from the instrumentalisation of Transnistria or Gagauzia against Chișinău, from attempts to polarize society along linguistic, identity, or religious lines, or from persistent attacks on our security.

Cooperation with Azerbaijan, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and others can continue bilaterally, pragmatically, based on mutual interest.

Georgia left the CIS in 2009 after the 2008 Russian invasion. Ukraine has drastically reduced its participation and has repeatedly withdrawn from agreements following Russia’s aggression, which began in 2014 and escalated with the full-scale invasion.

Why now? Because the economic, institutional, and political future of the Republic of Moldova lies where investments, development funds, credible standards, and reliable markets are—and that is in the European Union.

The EU Growth Plan for Moldova, worth up to €1.9 billion for 2025–2027, is concrete proof that Europe is investing in our transformation. In March 2026, Chișinău received a second tranche following the implementation of a new package of reforms.

This is the key point: the European Union offers the opportunity, but it is Moldova’s mission to turn it into reality.

The EU is more than economic benefits. It is a community of values - freedom, democracy, the rule of law.

This is why the 2028 deadline must be respected. Beyond political slogans, it represents a historic window of opportunity. Analyses by the European Initiative clearly indicate that 2028 is seen as the target year for signing the accession treaty, allowing ratification to follow within a realistic timeframe up to 2030.

Public support confirms this trajectory: a recent ATES poll shows that 62.1% of respondents in Moldova would vote for EU accession, rising to 84.3% among the diaspora.

The window of EU accession also points towards Romania. A recent statement from Bucharest by Romania’s President, Nicușor Dan, that Romania will continue to support Moldova’s EU integration and “the integration of our two economies” signals a shift in paradigm—from political support to real economic integration.

This means infrastructure interconnection, cross-border investments, energy cooperation, logistics, companies, joint projects, and tangible improvements in everyday life. Moldova thus becomes not just a subject of solidarity for Romania, but a strategic constant on both the public and private agenda.

Recent crises confirm this direction. Russia is well aware of Moldova’s vulnerabilities and exploits them, including through attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure that indirectly target our country.

Following strikes at the end of March, authorities in Chișinău warned of serious risks to energy stability, with Energocom managing a deficit of around a quarter of daily consumption.

This situation was overcome thanks to partners from Ukraine, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, and Poland - four of which are EU Member States.

The direction is clear: interconnection with Romania, coordination with Ukraine, access to the European market, diversification, local sources, and renewable energy development.

Renewable energy usage in Moldova has experienced rapid growth, with installed capacity increasing 12-fold over the last five years, with an impressive 1 gigawatt registered in April. This is the path towards genuine energy security and beating already in 2025 Moldova’s own target of 25% renewable usage ahead of the 2027 deadline.

On the Nistru River, the lesson is equally clear. Contamination following Russian attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure triggered an environmental alert across the basin.

Parliament explicitly condemned Russia, the Government activated emergency mechanisms including European ones available to candidate countries and institutions continue to document damages.

Here, Moldova’s diplomacy has a major mission: to transform an ecological crisis into a solid case of international accountability for transboundary damage.

In other words, diplomacy means linking our crises to European and international mechanisms of support, explaining why Moldova’s security is part of Europe’s security, and turning vulnerability into legitimacy and cooperation into results.

For a small country, smart diplomacy is one of the few forms of power available.

This is why 7 April 2009 must be read today not only as memory, but as a warning. A generation took to the streets then for a different future.

It would be unjust - and strategically irresponsible - to miss this moment again. Leaving the CIS alone will not solve everything. Nor can EU support replace our own internal effort.

But together, these developments show that Moldova has finally begun to align its compass in the right direction.

The slogan of the 7 April generation can now be updated:
“Refuse! Resist! I am a convinced pro-European.”

2028 is our obligation to those who believed in freedom on 7 April, to those who want security, jobs, clean water, stable energy, and institutions that respect them.

It is a national effort in which everyone must be called upon to contribute - so that, this time, we succeed together.

Daniel Vodă is an Associated Expert in Foreign Policy and Strategic Communication at the Institute for European Policies and Reforms (IPRE). Between 2020 and 2025, he served as Spokesperson for the Government and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and European Integration.

Most of the following newsletters are on Substack but not all.

Days Until the Hungarian Elections

Journalists Veronika Munk and Zoltán Szalay write this excellent newsletter counting down to Hungary’s April 12 parliamentary elections. Europe is holding its collective breath as Viktor Orban’s Fidesz faces opposition challenger Péter Magyar and his Tisza Party. This vote has the potential to shape issues related to Moldova and Ukraine’s EU accession as well as the geopolitical direction of the bloc as a whole. Munk and Szalay take you through the twists and turns of the extremely dirty campaign, highlighting Russian hybrid attacks and the increasing number of threats against journalists in Hungary.

Following the elections the newsletter will continue following government formation and covering the country’s major news developments.

You can read and subscribe at this link.

The Power Vertical (Newsletter / Podcast)

Brian Whitmore’s Power Vertical Podcast is one of the original great podcasts looking at Russia and its role in the former Soviet space. I was thrilled to join Brian as a guest in an episode right before Moldova’s 2025 parliamentary elections to discuss Russia’s hybrid attacks and election interference. Now the Power Vertical is on Substack as well, where you can get episodes and follow updates from the Power Vertical team.

You can read and subscribe at this link.

Ukraine’s Arms Monitor

Written by Olena Kryzhanivska, a Ukrainian defense analyst based in Canada, Ukraine’s Arms Monitor is a go-to resource for tracking military developments in the war in Ukraine. It combines detailed reporting on weapons and technology with sharp analysis of how the conflict is driving rapid innovation - particularly in areas like drone warfare. As Ukraine and Russia adapt in real time, this newsletter offers one of the clearest windows into how modern warfare is evolving.

You can read and subscribe at this link.

Goulash (VSquare)

Goulash is a newsletter from VSquare, an investigative journalism network focused on Central and Eastern Europe. It combines investigative reporting with sharp regional analysis - with a particular strength on Hungary and its wider influence.

You can read and subscribe at this link.

The Eastern Flank

Journalist Michał Kranz publishes this weekly newsletter focused on the top stories in Eastern Europe - which he defines as “all the countries east of Germany, Austria, and Italy, north of Greece and Turkey, and west of Russia, as well as Georgia and Armenia in the South Caucasus.” His newsletter is great for keeping up with the region, but I tune in for his analysis of how Eastern Europe impacts, and is impacted by, wider geopolitical events around the world.

You can read and subscribe at this link.

The Baltic Flank

While we’re on the topic of flanks - I recently discovered the Baltic Flank and have no idea how I missed it before. Written by investigative journalist Holger Roonemaa, the newsletter focuses on European security issues as well as Russia’s hybrid war against the West. While it casts a wide net, the main lens for the reporting and analysis is a focus on NATO and the EU’s eastern flank - Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.

You can read and subscribe at this link.

PolandWatch

Written by veteran journalist Stuart Dowell, PolandWatch is both a deep dive into Poland’s internal politics, and an analysis of its place in the wider region. The country’s complex political dynamics have foreshadowed many broader trends in European politics - including populism, democratic backsliding, migration challenges and more. It has also shown how a country can come back from the brink. PolandWatch is great for following these wider trends as they play out in the Polish and regional context.

You can read and subscribe at this link.

Brief Eastern Europe

Brief Eastern Europe is a regional newsletter covering politics and society across Central and Eastern Europe, with a focus on connecting developments across countries. It’s part of the New Eastern Europe family which also has an excellent podcast called “Talk Eastern Europe.” Their newsletter is a great way to track the main stories around the region and also get solid opinion and analysis of key events.

You can read and subscribe at this link.

Balkan Brew

Journalists Rodolfo Toè and Tommaso Siviero write this excellent weekly newsletter looking around the Balkans and picking out some of the most interesting and impactful stories in the region. If you’re like me, the Western Balkans especially can feel hard to get a handle on politically. Balkan Brew helps me catch the most important stories and (often) notice how many countries are facing challenges similar to those we are seeing in Moldova.

You can read and subscribe at this link.

how we cee it

That’s CEE = Central and Eastern Europe. Journalist Tomas Hrivnak covers a range of stories in business, tech, and security facing the region. I’ve recently enjoyed a number of stories looking at defense sector investments and how regional security is being impacted by the war in Iran.

You can read and subscribe at this link.

Did I Miss Something?

If you’ve got some newsletters that help you make sense of the region that didn’t make my list - share them in the comments!

On March 27, 1918, Bessarabia, a former Tsarist province dating back to 1812, when the Principality of Moldavia was divided in two, united with the Kingdom of Romania. Bessarabia, unlike modern Moldova, had clear cut natural borders, stretching from the Prut River in the West and the Dniester River in the East, Habsburg Bukovina in the north and the Danube mouth, and Black Sea in the south.

The decision was made by Sfatul Țării, the local parliament, a quasi-representative body like many others in the national peripheries of the former Tsarist Empire. In the later parts of WWI, similar indirectly representative bodies were created at a time where war prevented direct elections. Such parliaments decided the fates of other provinces and fragments of empire - creating national states (e.g. Poland and Estonia), or recreating lost independent states out of pieces of the Russian Empire (e.g. Lithuania).

This is to say Sfatul Țării was broadly representative and held democratic legitimacy according to the standards of the time. Moreover, it had legitimacy to decide the future of the province. The Bolsheviks, Mensheviks and other Russian political parties as well as the province’s main ethnic groups were represented. They all recognized the Sfatul Țării as the supreme and legitimate institution of the province.

Since then, the legitimacy of Sfatul Țării’s vote on March 27, 1918 has often been questioned or contested with the argument that the Romanian Army controlled the province since mid January 1918. At that time, the Sfatul Țării had requested Romanian support in a situation of deteriorating security and rampant violence. Much of this was driven by the disintegration of the Russian Army on the Romanian front and the transformation of these units into Bolshevik raiding parties in the chaotic context of the Russian civil war.

With this background, on the historical day of March 27, 19181, 3 members of the Sfatul Țării voted against the Union with Romania and 36 abstained. Only 86 voted for, while 12 were declared absentees.

The divided vote speaks to the fact there was some room for freedom of the ballot. In one example, Ștefan Balamez, a Ukrainian who was one of the three voting against the Union, worked in the interwar period in various capacities in the Chișinău City Hall. He was arrested by the Soviets in 1940 in the aftermath of the Red Army’s occupation of Bessarabia and sent to Siberia where he died in 1942. This demonstrates not only was there freedom of the vote, but that it did not clearly map onto what we might now call pro-Romanian or pro-Russian lines.

The vote was contested mainly by the Bolsheviks, but also by the former Tsarist political class. These forces, though irreconcilable enemies on the battlefield across all of the collapsing Russian Empire, allied in a common front during the Paris Peace Conference (1919-1920).

The Ukrainian political elites of all ideological stripes also vehemently contested the Union of Bessarabia with Romania as the province was perceived as part of ethnic Ukrainian lands2. This is in spite of all credible statistics (including Tsarist ones), showing that Ukrainians only made up around one quarter of the total population. Meanwhile, the Romanian-speaking populations3 made up around 50-60% of the province’s residents4.

The Union of Bessarabia with Romania came as a surprise to the residents of the other regions on the right bank of the Prut river that make up modern-day Romania. Bessarabia did not have a privileged place in the Romanian discourse before 1914. Transylvania was the most coveted Romanian speaking territory due to many factors, one of them being the level of national consciousness among Romanians in the region. There were also major political differences. The Bessarabian peasants were more preoccupied with the land reform than with any nation-building agenda, and Romania as a Kingdom was perceived as a harbinger of landlords’ interests. Furthermore, the King, even though he converted from Catholicism to Orthodoxy, was suspected of not being of their own faith.

The drive to unite Bessarabia with Western Moldavia (from which it was detached by the Russian Empire in 1812) and thus the Kingdom of Romania was driven by both internal and external factors. Even though Sfatul Țării was legitimate, it did not have resources and organizational capabilities to impose its authority outside the capital - and it sometimes struggled to control the capital itself. This was largely due to Bolshevik raiders and political fanatics sent from Odessa to spread propaganda and sow anarchy. This type of violent and chaotic situation was engulfing much of the collapsing Russian Empire as the Bolsheviks sought power at any cost.

Paradoxically, in this late stage of WWI, the sworn enemies in the Entente Powers and Central Powers managed to agree on this union. France, Great Britain and Germany all, for various reasons, recognized (or tolerated) the decision of Sfatul Țării of March 27, 1918. The United States neither endorsed nor opposed but chose to closely observe the process.

Within Bessarabia a sense of national identity had been growing - but with serious contradictions. Soldiers and elites serving on various fronts during the war had come to understand that they were linguistically the same as their brethren West of Prut River. At the same time, Bessarabia remained deeply Russified and even during the Sfatul Țării’s meeting of March 27th 1918 most of the discussions took place in Russian. This was because it remained the language of their education and most knew Romanian only at the vernacular level.

The Union of Bessarabia with Romania made the century long process of Russification of the Moldavians of Bessarabia reversible. In the interwar period, they enjoyed full national rights and schools in Romanian with Latin alphabet. Rights were granted to minorities as well, including to education in other languages. In the economic sphere, in the south, sometimes the minorities (Bulgarians) enjoyed privileges in detriment to the local Romanian speaking population, such as fishing rights in the Prut valley.

The interwar gave a fresh life to Romanian language and culture and made speaking Romanian more and more prestigious and respectful. In Bessarabia, it was no longer simply a tolerated language that was limited in the public space. The language was lively and loved by the Moldavians / Bessarabians across ethnic groups, including by the Gagauz. The latter were – in contrast to the Soviet period – one of the most integrated ethnic groups in the Romanian cultural and linguistic milieu. They were also one of the most loyal ethnic groups to the Romanian state as they were not attracted by Bolshevik ideology and propaganda before, during or after the Tatarbunar insurrection of 1924 - the peak of Soviet hybrid war against interwar Romania.

Being part of Romania between 1918-1940 spared tens of thousands of lives that otherwise would have become victims of Soviet state terror - as happened in other parts of the USSR. This included the Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (MASSR), created on the territory of the Ukrainian SSR in 1924. This region served a similar role to modern day Transnistria, allowing the new Russia to maintain a claim on Bessarabia until they could come back in force.

In the MASSR alone, about 40,000 persons of all ages and ethnic backgrounds died during the Holodomor of 1932-1933, and about 5,000 were executed by death squads during the Great Terror of 1937-8. Tens of thousands more were deported to Siberia and Kazakhstan. Life in interwar Romania was not paradise on earth either, it was the era of extremes all over Europe, but Romania did not practice state terror on the scale seen in the Soviet Union.

Note: Romania bears responsibility for its role in the Holocaust during World War II. Under the Antonescu regime, hundreds of thousands of Jews were killed in Bessarabia and Transnistria, often in coordination with Nazi Germany. Among the victims were many Jews who were educated in, and closely connected to, Romanian language and culture.

A number of survivors later played a role in preserving elements of Romanian literary and cultural life in Soviet Moldavia after 1944. Their contributions formed part of a broader, complex process through which Romanian cultural identity persisted despite sustained pressures of Russification in the Soviet period.

Looking at 1918 Through a Modern Lens

The events of 1918 remain highly relevant in both Romania and the Republic of Moldova, particularly in the context of Russia’s war against Ukraine. For some, the parallels appear striking: a moment of regional instability, uncertainty about borders, and the question of how small states can secure their future. In this view, unification with Romania is sometimes presented as a potential safeguard against renewed Russian aggression.

At the same time, the differences between 1918 and today are profound. The Union of Bessarabia with Romania was decided in the context of collapsing empires, limited state capacity, and a very different international system. Any comparable decision today would have to follow true democratic procedures, reflect the will of the population, and take place within a complex European and international legal framework.

In this context, occasional political statements in favor of unification - such as the expressions of personal support by President Sandu for a hypothetical referendum - should not be understood as signaling an imminent or likely political project. Public discourse on Union often operates at the level of identity and historical memory rather than concrete policy. In practice, there is limited political momentum for unification in either Chișinău or Bucharest.

Moreover, the regional security environment, while unstable, does not necessarily make Union more feasible. On the contrary, a deterioration of the security situation - such as a further Russian advance in southern Ukraine - would introduce significant risks and uncertainties. In such a scenario, Romania and its allies would likely prioritize stability and deterrence over undertaking a complex and potentially destabilizing political integration.

A more immediate and tangible challenge remains the unresolved status of the Left Bank, or Transnistria. As in the early 1990s, this issue is both a domestic and a regional security problem, now with broader European implications. Any sustainable solution would require the withdrawal of Russian forces and the demilitarization of the region, followed by a cautious and gradual reintegration process that does not undermine Moldova’s internal political balance or its European trajectory.

In this sense, while the legacy of 1918 continues to shape political imagination and identity, its direct replication under current conditions appears unlikely. The questions facing Moldova today are less about territorial reconfiguration and more about security, governance, and integration within the European framework - challenges that differ fundamentally from those of 1918.

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The Baltic Formula

In 1800, Napoleon Bonaparte sat down to redraw the map of France. He replaced a chaotic patchwork of feudal provinces with a clean grid of departments and prefectures, designed so that any citizen could reach the administrative centre within a day’s ride on horseback. Two hundred and twenty-six years later, long after the horses retired and the Emperor met his Waterloo, the French state still breathes through that same Napoleonic design.

The lesson for Chișinău is as clear as it is uncomfortable: administrative reforms are not policy tweaks. They are state architecture. Get them right, and they last for centuries. Get them wrong, and you live with the consequences just as long.

The current PAS government deserves real credit for touching this third rail of Moldovan politics. For decades, successive governments have stared at Moldova’s map, a bloated, Soviet-era patchwork of 898 tiny primării (city / town halls) and 32 redundant rayons (counties), and blinked. To propose consolidation in a country where “local identity” is often a polite euphemism for “local patronage” takes genuine political courage.

But courage is wasted if it is spent on half-measures. The reform currently under discussion, reducing the number of primării to around 300 and rayons to roughly 10, is a step forward, but a hesitant one. It risks falling into what might be called the Latvian trap: paying the political price of reform without actually solving the problem.

The Cost of Hesitation

Latvia has already run this experiment. In 2009, it reduced its 548 municipalities to 119. At the time, this was seen as bold. In reality, it was a compromise designed to soften local resistance. Within a decade, it became clear that many municipalities were still too small to function effectively. In 2021, Latvia had to go through the entire process again, reducing the number to 43. The lesson is simple: reform done halfway is reform done twice.

Moldova cannot afford that luxury. It is already sleepwalking into a demographic wall. Many rayons have lost over 40% of their population since independence. In places like Nisporeni, the state has quietly become the employer of last resort. Around 35% of the workforce are bugetari (state employees), outnumbering those in agriculture by a factor of three and industry by a factor of four.

This is not a development model. It is an expensive, fragmented waiting room for emigration.

The Baltic Formula

Moldova often speaks of the Baltic states as a North Star. But when it comes to the plumbing of the state, it prefers its own broken pipes. The Baltic formula is disarmingly simple: scale creates capacity.

Lithuania operates with just 60 municipalities for 2.8 million people. Latvia now has 43 for 1.9 million. Estonia runs with 79 for 1.3 million. In each case, the Soviet-style district layer, the equivalent of Moldova’s rayons, has been eliminated.

Georgia followed the same logic in 2006, under Saakashvili, consolidating rapidly, in his characteristic bold, top-down fashion, and abolishing the intermediate tier altogether. Ireland, with nearly 6 million people, functions with just 31 local authorities and no elected regional layer. Denmark retains regions, but with limited roles. Real power sits at the municipal level.

In Moldova, by contrast, a typical village primărie is a ghost ship and 60% of them don’t meet even the extremely low legal requirement of 1,500 residents. With a staff of five or six, a mayor, a secretary, a couple of accountants, there is no one left to design a wastewater system, apply for EU funding, or coordinate even a basic regional transport route.

Compare that to a Lithuanian municipality of 40,000 to 50,000 people, with over 100 to 150 professional staff, including departments dedicated to urban planning, infrastructure, investment attraction, and utilities.

The results are not cosmetic; they are foundational. In Lithuania, over 90% of households are connected to public water systems. In rural Moldova, that number is closer to 35%, with many families still relying on nitrate-heavy wells. The disparity in basic sanitation is equally stark: while Estonia has moved toward a high-tech, centralized waste management system that mirrors its digital prowess, Moldova remains scarred by nearly 5,000 unauthorized, open-air dumps that poison the local water table.

You just cannot build a 21st-century economy on 19th-century infrastructure managed by a 20th-century bureaucracy.

Leadership Over Logistics

One of the recurring objections to reform is that it is politically difficult, especially when it involves merging villages. That is true. But it is also beside the point.

The current “voluntary amalgamation” approach is, in essence, a polite request for people to vote themselves out of existence. It rarely works. Villages have weak coordination, strong local identities, and often long-standing tensions, administrative, political, sometimes even ethnic. Disputes over which village becomes the center are almost guaranteed. You cannot blame people for resisting this.

The solution is not to force villages into artificial unions. It is to change the unit of reform. Instead of merging villages with villages, Moldova should consolidate around existing rayon centers (county seats), natural economic, logistical, and cultural hubs. This creates scale while respecting how people actually live, move, and identify.

At the same time, local representation in villages can and should be preserved. The model already exists. Ukraine uses the starosta system. France has the maire délégué. Poland - soltys. Moldova can introduce a similar role, pretors, to handle local issues, while shifting real administrative capacity to the municipal level. This is not about erasing the village. It is about giving it a functioning administration behind it.

The Missing Ingredient: Fiscal Power

Structure alone is not enough. Without money, decentralization is an illusion. Moldova’s current system leaves local governments dependent and underpowered. To change that, fiscal decentralization must be part of the reform.

Allow municipalities to retain 50% of corporate income tax and 2 percentage points of VAT generated locally. This would immediately change incentives. Municipalities would compete, not for transfers from the central budget, but for businesses, residents, and investment. They would have a reason to issue permits faster, build better infrastructure, and attract employers. In short, they would behave like economic actors, not administrative outposts.

The Bottom Line

Today, Moldova is spending a disproportionate share of its limited resources simply to maintain its fragmented administrative structure. Even in larger communes, some 60% of local tax revenue goes not into development, but into paying the salaries of those who collect the taxes. It is a model of recursive futility.

If Moldova is serious about EU accession, this has to change. The country will need local administrations capable of absorbing large volumes of EU funding, managing complex projects, and acting as credible partners for investors. That requires scale.

PAS has done the difficult part by opening the discussion. Now comes the harder part: following through. If Moldova is willing to pay the political cost of reform, it should at least ensure the reform is worth it. So the question is not whether to reform, but how decisively. Doing it halfway risks repeating the Latvian experience - paying once now, and again later.

Administrative systems, once built, tend to endure. Moldova has the opportunity to design one that works for decades to come. It would be a pity to waste it.

Like many others who watched the buildup to war closely, I had bags packed and my car stocked in early February 2022. Predictions of the Russians taking Kyiv in 72 hours and the evacuations of Embassies in the Ukrainian capital drove most news cycles in that month. On February 15th, 2022 Moldova Matters switched to a “quick hit” format of short release articles addressing the deepening crisis1. Things felt imminent but we didn’t know when it would begin.

On February the 24th I remained glued to media reports of progress across the suddenly massive front line. That day I wrote two articles (one, two), and reading them back now they remind me of how uncertain and confusing that time was.

In Moldova, it was clear to anyone paying attention that Russia would not stop at the Moldovan border. In later years I spoke to a Moldovan Army Officer who served at the time who said that they expected to be engaged within 7 days. Even as counterattacks slowed the Russian army’s advance on Kyiv and Kharkiv, in the South enemy forces broke through rapidly capturing Kherson. By February 26th they were outside Mykolaiv - the last real obstacle in the advance on Odesa. But there they stalled.

Ukraine won the Battle of Mykolaiv, and the Battle of Kyiv, and in subsequent years has retaken Kherson and countless other towns and cities.

When I sip my coffee in Moldova and reflect that “we’re still here,” it is due to the courage and sacrifice of so many in Ukraine. In those early days it was far from obvious that Ukraine would turn Russia back in such critical battles. It was inconceivable, at least for me, that this war would still be raging in 2026.

Back in July 2024 I sat down for a discussion that turned into a 2 episode podcast with my friend and business partner Vlad Șuleanschi. We discussed what it was like to experience those early days and how people mobilized all across Moldova to support the sudden and overwhelming influx of Ukrainian refugees. Refugees who are still here in many cases and are now members of our communities. If you’re interested, here are the 2 episodes:

Marking Four Long Years of War

Today President Maia Sandu released a short video marking the 4th anniversary of the full scale invasion. She spoke in English - the video is available here:

Prime Minister Alexandru Munteanu also released a statement saying:

“On February 24, 2022, I didn’t watch the war on TV. I was in Kiev. I woke up with the first explosions, the sirens didn’t even go off in the first few days, an airfield near my house was being bombed. In a few moments, the reality of millions of Ukrainians changed. They were forced to leave their homes in search of a safe shelter, and the war separated entire families, leaving behind pain and uncertainty,

Today marks four years since the Russian Federation has been waging a barbaric war against Ukraine. Four years in which the Kremlin has relentlessly bombed Ukrainian cities, hit energy infrastructure, and turned winters into a weapon against the people.

Russia has brought the war to the home of every Ukrainian and is killing innocent people to break the spirit of Ukraine. But the spirit of this people is invincible. All this time, I have seen the determination of the people not to abandon their freedom. I have seen the unity of a people that does not break, but becomes stronger and more united. I have also seen European solidarity – human solidarity – thousands of Ukrainian refugees met at the border by our citizens who fraternally opened their homes to them and offered them food and shelter.

(…)

Glory to Ukraine,”

In Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy marked the occasion with a series of videos and statements. In one, lasting 18 minutes and subtitled in English, he reflects on those early days of the war and shows for the first time the series of bunkers that the government operated out of when coordinating the defense of Kyiv and the rest of the nation.

Today, President Zelenskyy hosted European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, European Council President Antonio Costa and the leaders of 9 European countries who traveled to Kyiv to show Western support for Ukraine.

This show of support was reflected by posts, videos and statements by European Embassies and diplomats in Chisinau, including the Embassies of Sweden, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Austria2, the United Kingdom, and others.

The US Embassy in Chisinau has posted no statements at the time of writing, instead featuring a profile of South Carolina as part of the 250th anniversary celebration schedule. They were also notably absent from any comment on last year’s 3rd anniversary.

Of all the posts, perhaps the most direct was the one from Romania’s Ambassador to Chisinau Cristian-Leon Turcanu. He served as Ambassador in Kyiv at the outbreak of war and wrote a lengthy post condemning the war, supporting Ukraine and reflecting on the change it wrought. All with this iconic art of the Moskva as backdrop.

“This is for the ones who stood their ground”

Russia’s defeat at the Battle of Mykolaiv stalled their offensive in the South and they have never come as close to Odesa - and therefore Moldova - as they did back in March-April 2022. Since that time Moldova has fended off mass hybrid attacks but not had to worry about Russian tanks crossing the borders.

Not while Ukraine hold’s its ground.

In those very early days it seemed as if Odesa would be a front line city in a matter of days. Many people, almost all women and children, crossed into Moldova seeking help during those days - and they got it. But back in Odesa people in the city prepared.

Reflecting on those days I’ll always think of this video - in which ordinary people fill sandbags from the public beaches for the defense of the city. The video shows the work as a band sets the rhythm and encourages the crowd playing “It’s My Life.”

Слава Україні! Героям слава!

“If we have a referendum, I would vote for the unification with Romania.”

In an hour long episode1 of the Rest is Politics “Leading” podcast, that line stood out. Moldova’s President Maia Sandu stated that, given the option, she would vote to unite her country with its neighbor and effectively eliminate her own elected position. This line has made waves inside and outside Moldova and led to a whole lot of confusion around the world. So let’s unpack what’s going on here a bit for the non-Moldovan audience.

A Unique Relationship in Europe

Moldova and Romania are neighbors that share a language and a lot of common history. The relationship between the countries doesn’t have any clear analogs elsewhere in Europe. In the middle ages modern day Moldova was part of the principalities that would later go on to form the Kingdom of Romania in 1881. But modern Moldova, historically called Bessarabia, was left out of this new nation because it had been annexed by the Russian Empire in 1812. When that empire disintegrated in 1917, Moldova declared independence and a year later voted to unite with Romania. The countries remained united until the Soviet Union re-annexed Bessarabia as part of their secret deal with Hitler in the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact.

There are a lot of people on both sides of the River Prut that look back to this period of greater Romania nostalgically. Romania allows anyone with Romanian ancestors who were citizens before 1940 to reacquire their lost citizenship. Currently, there are no precise, public estimates of how many people in Moldova are dual citizens, but it is likely somewhere between a third and half of the population. This count includes President Maia Sandu, Prime Minister Alexandru Munteanu and many other politicians in the pro-EU camp.

Was This a Signal of a Change in Policy?

Short answer - no. In her interview Maia Sandu goes on to note that there is no popular demand for union and that it is not a realistic goal. She states that joining the EU is a realistic goal and that is what she and the government are committed to doing.

The context of the answer was important, the Rest is Politics hosts Rory Stewart and Alastair Campbell try to draw out a full picture of the people they interview starting with their childhood and early life. President Sandu was speaking about Moldova’s 1991 independence and how the swirl of ideas and movements included mass demonstrations for union. She noted that we’ll never know if there was a majority for union at that moment because no referendum was held. She answered the question in this context and made it clear it was a personal opinion and not a part of her political project or political ambitions.

Political Blunder or Careful Signaling?

That depends on who you ask. Union is usually considered to be the 3rd rail of Moldovan politics - you don’t touch this issue unless you have a political death wish. While small political parties have made their whole identities about union, most politicians recognize it is too divisive and far too unlikely to speak about. Maia Sandu has answered this question before in Romanian language interviews. She answered it exactly the same way, basically honestly giving a personal opinion. Some people find this refreshing in a politician, some find it to be a political blunder. If she did have a political calculus in the answer, the fact that she is not running for reelection may have played a role.

With that said, there is a case to be made that this was slightly more calculated than just that. When asked by the hosts to clarify why she would support it, President Sandu said:

“Look at what’s happening around Moldova today, look at what’s happening in the world. It is getting more and more difficult for a small country like Moldova to survive as a democracy and a sovereign country… and of course to resist Russia.”

For context we should go back to the Union of Bessarabia with Romania in 1918. Contrary to what many modern unionists claim, this was not principally a nationalistic or ethnically driven process. At that time Moldova was substantially more ethnically and linguistically diverse than it is today. The urban centers largely spoke Russian and while the large majority of the population were Romanian-speaking they were spread out in smaller towns and agrarian communities. The first parliament, the Sfatul Țării, actually debated and ultimately chose to join Romania while speaking in Russian, underscoring how little nationalism played in the decision.

So if this wasn’t totally a national project what was it? It was a decision based on national security.

As the Russian Civil War raged in the east, Bolshevik units, often acting as rogue raiding parties, made more and more incursions into the new Moldavian Democratic Republic. They burned estates and villages, occupied rail links and began an attempt to overthrow the Sfatul Țării to replace it with revolutionary committees. In January 1918 the Sfatul Țării requested military support from Romania and the Romanian army quickly restored order. This led to a debate about what ultimate political settlement would ensure security and resulted in the vote for union in April 1918.

This is important context for the President’s modern remarks and for Moldova’s current situation. Both in 1917 and in 2025 there was no mass political movement for union. The option was and is popular with a segment of the population but nowhere near a majority. At the same time, a vast majority of the country would look for almost any solution rather than rejoin a Russian Empire. That was true in 1918 and it is true today.

Whether or not it was intended, President Sandu’s comments can be read as an implicit warning to the EU. She implied that while we are standing at the front door waiting to get in, if you don’t open it, then we might just climb through the window.

Anyone paying attention to the events of the past few years cannot help but conclude that when this ends there will be no small, neutral countries between the EU and the new Russian Empire. Unlike Ukraine and Belarus, Moldova does have this extra option to find itself on the right side of that divide - a kind of geopolitical “pull in case of emergency” lever. So while people should really not read much into President Sandu’s comments on a podcast, it is relevant to remember that this complex history informs how Moldovans view their options in an ever more dangerous world.

Thanks for reading this on Moldova Matters, or via the cross-post at World Briefing with Michael Bociurkiw. Consider becoming a free or paid subscriber to Moldova Matters to keep up with the most important news about this small but very important country.

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Disclaimer: The views expressed in this document are of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the National Bank of Moldova.

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Moldova’s economy faces a persistent puzzle. Entrepreneurs start businesses regularly. In a good year, agricultural exports flow steadily. Yet the country’s productivity growth lags far behind its European neighbors. The problem is not lack of ambition, it’s that firms enter small and stay small, do not innovate and only rarely are able to cover the fixed costs of internationalization. Given the small internal market size, exporting is the most likely growth source. Several concrete mechanisms trap enterprises in low-productivity equilibrium, regardless of how hard entrepreneurs work or how good their business ideas might be. Lack of credit is only one part of the answer.

The Information Problem: When Nobody Knows Who’s Creditworthy

At the heart of Moldova’s growth constraint lies a fundamental information asymmetry. Banks need to know: Is this borrower reliable? Will they repay? What assets can secure the loan if things go wrong? In developed economies, these questions get answered through comprehensive credit bureaus, transparent financial statements, and enforceable collateral registries. In Moldova, these information channels are either broken or non-existent.

My survey of Moldova’s financial institutions (Constantinescu (2025)1) reveals how this plays out in practice. Survey participants, nine commercial banks and 54 non-bank credit organizations (OCNs), indicate they operate in essentially different markets. Not by choice, but because they are responding rationally to different information environments.

Banks concentrate on firms that can provide detailed documentation: 78% consider comprehensive financial statements critical for lending decisions, and 89% rate real estate collateral as very important. When you can’t easily verify a firm’s payment history, operational capabilities, or growth prospects, you default to what you can see and measure: buildings you can seize if the loan goes bad, and audited accounts that external professionals have verified.

OCNs occupy the space banks will not touch, functionally and geographically. Nearly half (48%) rely heavily on personal guarantees from business owners—essentially betting on the individual rather than the business. They evaluate firms through holistic assessments that incorporate “soft” information: most likely reputation in local communities, observed business practices, character judgments. This works for very small loans, but it’s expensive to scale and inherently risky.

The result? According to the World Bank Enterprise Survey, the 35-percentage-point gap between medium firms’ bank usage (50%) and small firms’ usage (15%) represents one of Eastern Europe’s widest disparities. The same survey indicates that ninety percent of small Moldovan firms rely exclusively on internal financing, growing only as fast as they can save.

The Shadow Economy Connection: Skills or Incentives?

Survey data in Figure 1 shows almost 80% of banks cite inadequate or absent Financial Projections as critical for rejection. The obvious story: firms lack financial literacy. But consider the entrepreneur’s view. Formalization brings immediate costs—taxes, compliance, fees—for uncertain benefits. When would you formalize? Only when credit access benefits clearly exceed taxation costs. Those profits come about when answering a nontrivial list of questions: Do I get higher sales in an uncertain environment? Can I access new markets? Are my production costs stable and predictable? That benefit rarely materializes in an environment with substantial exogenous shocks each year, affecting both lenders and borrowers.

Over half of banks and 40% of OCNs report that their lack of long-term funding constrains lending. Credit maturities rarely exceed 18 months because Moldova’s institutional foundations feel fragile. Property rights seem uncertain. Courts struggle with commercial disputes. Contract enforcement is slow.

Banks want formal documentation, but formalization is expensive. Firms would formalize for five-year growth capital, but credit extends barely past a year. Each actor behaves rationally given their constraints, the outcome is systematically bad for everyone. A series of flawed incentives become the driver of a two-tier credit market swirling forward the vicious circle of informality.

The Collateral Registry: Where Legal Theory Meets Market Reality

In theory, collateral registries solve a core problem: they create clear, enforceable property rights in pledged assets, expanding credit access beyond firms with real estate.

But approximately 30-45% of financial institutions report judicial enforcement as completely inefficient (more details available in Constantinescu (2025)). When recovering collateral takes months or years with unpredictable outcomes, secured lending becomes fiction. Banks stick to real estate, the one asset where seizure is somewhat predictable. Firms without real estate cannot access bank credit regardless of business fundamentals. Even successful firms remain trapped. As they grow and improve operations, they cannot properly signal improved creditworthiness because the collateral that would facilitate “graduation” to bank financing remains legally ambiguous.

The Lock-In Effect: How First Relationships Become Traps

Once a firm establishes an OCN relationship, that OCN accumulates private information about the firm’s payment behavior and operational capabilities. This relationship-specific information is not easily transferable to other lenders. The firm may then become informationally captive to that first lender. Even improvements such as increased revenues, professionalized operations, translate only modestly into better financing terms because they cannot be credibly and easily communicated to alternative lenders. The firm faces a binary choice: accept existing creditor terms or forgo external financing.

This explains Moldova’s peculiar enterprise structure: abundant small firms, very few medium-sized firms, and a handful of large firms (often foreign-owned or connected to international value chains). The missing middle is not missing because entrepreneurs lack ambition, it’s missing because the past legal and infrastructure setup led to an information architecture that prevented growth.

Beyond Finance: Why Credit Alone Won’t Fix This

Even substantially improved credit access cannot drive productivity transformation when firms lack innovative capacity to use that capital effectively. Moldova’s export diversification record tells the story. Between 2008-2023, Moldova introduced merely 12 new export product categories, contributing just $40 per capita. Compare this to Romania’s 33 new products ($244 per capita) or Lithuania’s 26 products ($361 per capita). The perceived financing gap may signal a broader innovation and internationalization gap.

Small firms lack resources for R&D, technical expertise to identify and adopt new technologies, and organizational capabilities to implement productivity-enhancing changes needed to export. Providing these firms with more credit will not automatically solve their innovation deficit, they may simply finance continued production using outdated methods, perpetuating low productivity even as debt burdens increase.

Starting From Strength: Why Agro and Biotech Make Strategic Sense

The financial constraints described earlier reveal only half of Moldova’s growth challenge. Even with improved credit access, firms need something more fundamental: the knowledge, capabilities, and market connections that transform capital into productive growth. This is where industrial strategy2 shifts from fixing financial plumbing to building productive capacity. Moldova’s path forward leverages what exists: agricultural know-how, food processing infrastructure, and fermentation expertise from wine production. These quaint traditions, with the right tech mix can turn into industrial capabilities with direct biotech applications.

Wine production requires precise fermentation control, microbiology understanding, and quality management systems. These capabilities translate directly into producing biofertilizers, probiotics, and enzyme preparations. Agricultural waste, grape pomace, sunflower husks, corn stalks, becomes valuable feedstock for biotech processes rather than disposal problems. Processing facilities can be retrofitted incrementally rather than requiring expensive greenfield investment.

This makes technology adoption divisible rather than lumpy. A wine producer can experiment with probiotic production using existing fermentation equipment, test markets, build expertise, and scale gradually. Compare this to semiconductor manufacturing or aerospace, where minimum efficient scale requires hundreds of millions in upfront investment. Agrotech allows firms to learn by doing without existential risk.

The territorial dimension matters too. Moldova’s agricultural sectors span rural regions that urban-concentrated IT strategies would bypass. Connecting these regions through upgraded bio and agrotech creates inclusive growth rather than exacerbating rural-urban divides. A dedicated IT element should be further developed, as it provides essential complementary capabilities to developing a knowledge driven transformation of the agricultural sector.

The Cluster Model: Why Firms Need Neighbors

Individual firms struggle to build the complementary capabilities modern industries require. A biofertilizer producer needs testing laboratories, specialized cold-chain logistics, and regulatory expertise for EU standards. Building all this in-house is prohibitively expensive. Geographic concentration of related firms creates shared infrastructure no single company could build alone. Testing facilities serve multiple firms. Specialized suppliers emerge. Knowledge spills through labor mobility and informal interactions. Ideally, universities and research centers may share research facilities with new startups (Editorial note3).

Clusters also solve the coordination problem in industrial upgrading. Firms invest when confident others will make complementary investments. But clusters don’t spontaneously appear. They need anchors, large innovative companies that stabilize cost and revenue stream of SMEs interacting with it.

Anchor Firms: Accelerating Knowledge Transfer

Global value chain integration becomes essential here. An anchor firm, typically a multinational with established networks, brings what domestic SMEs cannot build independently: proven processes, quality standards, market access, and credible knowledge about what works. When an anchor establishes operations, it creates a template. Suppliers must meet its standards, forcing capability upgrading. Trained workers eventually move to other firms or start their own, disseminating knowledge. Its success signals Moldova can execute, attracting additional anchors.

The learning is concrete. Consider a beverage multinational sourcing probiotic ingredients. Its Moldova supplier must meet precise microbial counts, stability specs, and delivery reliability. Meeting these forces investments in quality control, process documentation, and supply chain management. But the multinational also provides technical assistance, shares testing protocols, conducts training audits, and offers long-term contracts justifying investment. More critically, it offers access to international markets with proven niches. This is infinitely faster and less risky than learning by trial and error in export markets. The anchor already knows which markets pay premiums, what specifications they require, and how to navigate regulations. It absorbs internationalization risk while suppliers focus on execution.

Beyond Dependence: Building Autonomous Capability

Global value chain integration is not the endpoint. Firms successfully serving anchor requirements accumulate more than revenue. They build proprietary capabilities, develop technological understanding, and establish reputations for reliability. This accumulated capability enables eventual spin-out. The supplier that mastered probiotics for a beverage multinational can develop branded products. It understands production technology, has established quality systems, knows cost structure, and has proven execution. Most importantly, it has cash flow from anchor contracts financing product development without the desperate constraints strangling SME innovation.

Chilean salmon farming exemplifies this trajectory. Firms initially supported by Japanese and US collaborators, integrated as low-tier suppliers to multinationals, gradually absorbing technology and market knowledge. Over two decades, Chilean firms progressed from basic processing to sophisticated breeding, nutrition science, and proprietary genetics. Today they compete globally. Quite likely they couldn’t have reached that position without the protected learning environment global value chain integration provided. The same holds across several success stories in different industries and geographies4.

Moldova’s trajectory could follow a similar logic. Firms master biofertilizer production serving a multinational’s regional operations, then develop specialized formulations for Moldova’s specific soil conditions, eventually exporting proprietary products to similar territories in Central and Eastern Europe. The anchor relationship provides stability and knowledge transfer making this progression possible.

The path from financial exclusion to productive capability is not direct but becomes navigable. Fix information asymmetries trapping firms in credit constraints. Build clusters providing essential shared infrastructure. Attract anchors accelerating knowledge transfer. Create space for graduation from dependence to autonomy. Each step builds on the previous, addresses real constraints, and calibrates to Moldova’s actual capabilities rather than borrowed templates.

“The leader Putin failed to break”

That was the title of the article published on December 31st when the Telegraph named President Maia Sandu as their pick for World Leader of 2025. Senior Foreign Correspondent Adrian Blomfield traveled to Chisinau to interview her for the occasion.

The interview resulted in an excellent article which I highly recommend. He also interviewed her on camera and you can watch that interview on Youtube here.

The Rest is… Moldova!

My second recommendation is the most recent episode of The Rest is Politics podcast. Hosts Rory Stewart and Alastair Campbell traveled to Moldova this week to interview Maia Sandu for their second podcast “Leading.” That episode will be out on Monday and you’ll be able to watch it on Youtube or find it where ever you get your podcasts on the Leading feed.

On the same day as they interviewed Maia Sandu, Rory Stewart and Alastair Campbell also recorded an episode of their main podcast The Rest is Politics from Chisinau. The first half of the episode is dedicated to a discussion of whether or not Donald Trump’s actions in Venezuela indicate that the United States will soon annex Greenland1. The second half of the podcast is dedicated to a discussion of Moldova. It’s an excellent listen and we discover that 2 of Rory Stewart’s great grandparents were Moldovan!

You can find it wherever you get your podcasts or watch it on Youtube here:

Personally, a Pretty Cool Week

When he was in town in December I had the pleasure of meeting and chatting with the Telegraph’s Adrian Blomfield. As I’m basically the only foreign correspondent (of sorts) in Chisinau I’ve gotten to meet a lot of impressive and fascinating journalists over the years. This week though was quite a surprise as I got a last minute invitation by Rory Stewart to meet with him, Alastair Campbell and their team to discuss Moldova. I’m a huge fan of their podcast and a loyal listener since it launched in March 2022 so this was very cool.

“The Best is Yet to Come”

Finally, I hope that all of you are enjoying your winter holidays wherever in the world you are. In Moldova, we greeted the new year with a rather unexpected holiday wish(?) declaration(?) from the US Embassy. Here was their post:

This seems to be US Embassy Chisinau’s own special way of greeting the new year, as other Embassies such as those in Bucharest, Kyiv and Tbilisi took a slightly more traditional approach. Is it a prediction of the year to come in Moldova? I’ll leave that up to you to decide.

Once again, from me this time, Happy New Year and Happy Holidays. We’ll be back next week with a roundup of the news and we’ll resume our normal schedule.

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Moldova’s task is not to senselessly copy foreign reform packages but to construct an economic architecture grounded in its own comparative advantages and forecasting opportunities. World economic complexity has evolved from pencil manufacturing to globalization - with smartphone ubiquity and the integration of artificial intelligence in everything. The fastest-growing sectors no longer rely just on services, but require serious R&D investment. Moldova faces this context with three classical growth requirements: human capital, infrastructure, and investment.

Foresight: What Should Moldova Do - and What It Can Offer?

Moldova requires permanent inclusive economic foresight through mapping futures and identifying current and potential comparative advantages. Several are evident: low labor costs within the European space and available industrial zones from Soviet infrastructure. Moldova needs a clear picture for every citizen showing how agriculture, given high soil fertility potential, will modernize to EU productivity levels. This approach will help mobilize farmers with their communities, banks, and state to address widespread rural bankruptcy in Moldova. These become development assets when connected to future industries through planning across 5-, 15-, and 30-year horizons. This process should not be confined to government directives or business elites but must include diverse formats and involve all stakeholders. Ultimately, foresight will aid in responding to the question of what Moldova can supply for itself, the EU, and the world.

No one can schedule a full, robust long-term economic plan, but preparation for trends and risks is possible. All the countries that achieved rapid economic shifts Ireland, Scandinavia, Israel, and South Korea - began with foresight and positivistic synchronization, enabling future coordination instead of conflicts and frustration. This provided capabilities to recognize and exploit emerging opportunities while offering platforms for forming alliances with strategic partners to jointly invest in innovations.

New Industrialization

One of the key trends of the next decade is systematic reindustrialization (or new industrialization) with spatial development planning. Moldova needs a consortium structure that brings together actors from various sectors, a clear understanding of existing capabilities and human skills within the territory, and an analysis of expectations to attract major players as investors. Having well-prepared strategic plans makes it easier to attract industrial investors and partners, especially when infrastructure, workforce development, and regulatory frameworks are aligned with a robust and clear plan.

Moldova has an opportunity to participate in Ukrainian reconstruction by implementing smart infrastructure designs that meet domestic utility needs and support cross-border cooperation and solidarity efficiency.

The establishment of a kind of Development Foundation, Strategic Investment Fund, or Republican Bank merits consideration. It should be operated by independent professionals, as cumatrism1 (patronage-based) management would ruin it. A related initiative, also could be a private-public Export Agency that facilitates global sales and market access to the EU and new emerging economies, such as Africa and Asia.

Furthermore, Moldova can learn from successful FinTech modernizations in Latin American, Asian, Gulf countries, Estonia, Ireland, Luxembourg, Israel. It could establish itself as a new, transparent, and liberal European FinTech hub by adopting simple regulations and international expert oversight. This approach depends on reliable experts and organizations to guide the process, with the state providing support rather than direct control.

And one of the essential steps for Moldova, connected with FinTech, is to transform remittances into investments and strengthen domestic resource mobilization.

To have Democracy is not enough.

Market liberalization remains essential. Total factor productivity depends on optimal conditions. Moldova shows numerous Post-Soviet institutional traits and does not have impressive economic freedom, even when compared to regional peers.

EU integration automatically positions the government toward regulatory functions rather than enabling the spirit of enterprise and venture building. After 35 years of limited administrative success across different governments, even the current pro-European administration operates within a system that has discredited itself.

Therefore, Moldova must foster an environment of freedom and adopt an ecosystem approach for creative destruction, where development is driven by entrepreneurs from rural areas and local producers to high-tech startups and international players, rather than by centralized state institutional bounded cognition. Entrepreneurs are engines of growth when conditions do not constrain them.

Foreign aid does not make countries wealthier, but can provide an ecosystem for growth. The flypaper effect and rent-seeking exist everywhere; the question is whether conditions can be structured so that productive behavior becomes preferred for economic agents.

Moldova has the biggest proportion of shadow economy in the EU - but this doesn’t just mean that people are breaking the law. It means that the economic agents are trying to perform in the most effective way and that the market needs liberalization.

For example, the typical rural small private farmer works in grey conditions simply because he does not see other options for surviving. The government should ask the question not of how to suppress and get taxes to match new international bank requirements, but how to liberate it from barriers that citizens and businesses avoid, to not hinder their potency.

Mutual Benefits

The Pridnestrovie-Transnistrian question should transform into an economic opportunity through mutual value creation: international investment, privatization, and new industrial projects creating material incentives for cooperation on both banks of the Dniester. This deal automatically addresses energy instability and production cost in the region. Without resolution, this frozen situation will continue freezing Moldova’s broader economic potential.

Logistic hub

Moldova should dedicate all efforts to becoming a logistics hub within the Trans-European Transport Network. Moldova should advocate extending or developing new corridors connecting Scandinavia to Greece and Solidarity Lanes from Portugal - Central Europe to Donbas through Chișinău, Bălți, Giurgiulesti and Tiraspol. This is a unique moment when Moldova can change its logistical position on the world map.

This is possible only with the previous points implemented. Infrastructure must generate productivity rather than accumulate debt. Roads financed through loans without producing revenue deteriorate to a critical condition, requiring repeated reconstruction through additional borrowing. Fiscal illusion already affects Moldova due to populism.

The population should not decrease

It is essential to recognize that addressing demographic challenges: population decline, low birth rates, and migration, are critical for achieving sustained economic growth. Without intervention in systematic reasons of these issues, the prospect of ongoing growth becomes increasingly unattainable.

BANI Education

(BANI – another fashionable acronym means brittle, anxious, non-linear, incomprehensible | *Bani in Romanian/Moldovan means money)

Education reform requires stronger development of STEM disciplines and creative, adaptive skills needed in contemporary volatile conditions. Expert consensus confirms that early “Prussian” industrial mass educational systems no longer match modern requirements for personal and state success. The existence of a large, skilled diaspora, Russian anti-war migrants, solidarity from EU countries, and numerous professionals loyal to democratic Moldova all represent a significant resource.

One basic step could be to introduce a school course on entrepreneurship, finance, and economic literacy developed by international experts.

The budget should refocus from education for diplomas and prestige toward funding actual educational projects, generating capabilities for current and adaptive competencies, and affordable workforce requalification to new demands. Education development should be synchronized with market realities foresight-forecasting and an investment plan.

Solarpunk Stork

Moldova may never replicate Ireland’s case, Israel’s path to the “Start-Up Nation” or the experience of the “Asian Dragons,” but why Moldova can’t become the “Solarpunk Stork?”

*Stork in Romanian is “Barza” – one of the traditional symbols of hope and prosperity in Moldova.

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Russia’s full-scale invasion has relentlessly targeted Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. What is often treated as a purely Ukrainian challenge however, actually presents a wider regional opportunity. Moldova, a country that has been moving to modernize its own energy sector and integrate with European systems, is well positioned to become a clean-energy partner for Ukraine’s recovery and a new platform for investors seeking exposure to Ukraine’s broader reconstruction but wary of the continued war-risk on the ground.

A sustainable energy recovery in Ukraine depends on the creation of a modern, decarbonized energy system capable of meeting new industrial needs, supporting municipal services and providing the reliability required. This task becomes even more urgent given the scale of destruction Russia has inflicted on Ukraine’s power generation and grid infrastructure. According to the Kyiv School of Economics, the energy sector has suffered more than US$56 billion in damage and losses, with at least US$50 billion in immediate reconstruction needs. A large portion of this reflects the catastrophic damage to thermal generation capacity and high-voltage transmission lines. Any long-term reconstruction strategy requires diversification, decentralization and integration with European power networks.

Against this background Moldova enters the picture. Over the last three years, Moldova has undergone one of the fastest energy-sector transformations in Europe. The synchronization of Moldova and Ukraine’s grid with the Continental European system in March 2022 was a pivotal moment enabling the country to operate independently of the old Soviet-era IPS/UPS network and opening the door to cross-border electricity trade. This has laid the technical foundation for deeper integration into regional markets. However, Moldova’s reform momentum did not stop there. In 2025, the government held its first major renewable-energy auction, awarding roughly 165 megawatts of wind and solar capacity and mobilizing close to €190 million in investment. The auction results signaled that global energy developers are prepared to invest in Moldovan renewables when regulatory clarity and grid access are assured. For foreign investors, this provides the region with a predictable offtake along with alignment with European market rules and opportunities for scale within the region.

The commercial case for Moldova comes more sharply into focus when viewed through the lens of Ukraine’s reconstruction needs. Moldova’s solar and wind resources are well suited to utility-scale generation. Projects developed today can meet Moldova’s rising domestic demand while creating the possibility of future exports into Ukrainian border regions once conditions allow. Moldova’s regional integration into future dry port, maritime cargo handling and infrastructure development projects require future energy sources. Between port redevelopment in Odesa Oblast, greater logistics connectivity in the Danube River Basin and improvements in transportation infrastructure across the Southern Bessarabia region reliability and speed matter as much as price and proximity becomes a powerful economic advantage.

Moldova is also well positioned to become a regional testbed for technologies that will be essential to Ukraine’s energy rebuild. As Ukrainian municipalities and local industry recover they will need decentralized power systems such as microgrids, battery storage, and smart-grid infrastructure capable of sustaining operations under stress. Moldova’s regulatory openness to innovation, demonstrated by the United Nations Development Programs (UNDP) “Energy Sandbox” initiative provides a controlled environment where companies can pilot such technologies before adapting them into Ukraine with support from multilateral donors. This combination of policy receptiveness and Moldova’s manageable market size makes it uniquely attractive to companies specializing in grid modernization, digital energy management and storage solutions.

Beyond generation and storage, Moldova has the potential to host manufacturing and supply-chain activities directly tied to Ukraine’s reconstruction. The country’s free economic zones, competitive labor force and improving logistics links with Romania make it feasible to assemble solar panels, produce transformer components or manufacture other hardware that is costly to ship directly into Ukraine during or immediately after the conflict. Cross-border infrastructure plans backed by multilateral donors reinforce these commercial opportunities. Moldova and Romania are advancing the Isaccea–Vulcănești–Chișinău interconnection, a strategically important line backed by the European Investment Bank (EIB) and the European Bank for Recovery and Development (EBRD) that will significantly increase import and export capacity in the region. The project is part of a broader shift towards a more regional energy integration, and once completed, it will create the physical pathways needed to support both Moldovan exports and Ukraine’s future reconstruction demand. The involvement of international financial institutions such as the EIB and EBRD provides an additional valuable layer of confidence and accountability in the scale of these projects that should be encouraging to outside investors.

Moldova’s ongoing transformation is creating commercially interesting opportunities that are directly connected to Ukraine’s reconstruction without the associated risk of being located inside Ukraine. Companies that move early in generation, storage, manufacturing or frontier technologies stand to benefit from the dual tailwind of Moldova’s accelerating reform agenda and Ukraine’s urgent and ongoing need for reliable, modern energy systems. With renewed policy momentum following Moldova’s 2025 parliamentary election and growing investor interest, it has the capacity to become a clean-energy backbone for a more resilient region in its corner of Europe. For investors seeking both returns and access to Ukraine’s reconstruction story, Moldova offers a strategic entry point.

All through the month of December the Moldova Resilience Fund is raising money for Moldovan independent media outlets Zona de Securitate and Cu Sens. Moldova Matters exists because of the amazing work of local journalists who play a key role in supporting the nation’s democratic resilience against Russian hybrid attacks. Follow this link to learn more and for an opportunity to support this work.

Disclaimer: David Smith is a board member and co-founder of the Moldova Resilience Fund (MRF). Moldova Matters and MRF are entirely separate entities.

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In recent years, amid global instability, Moldovan companies have visibly intensified their investment activity.

This has increased firms’ capitalization. Private investments, which have been rising for six consecutive quarters, contributed positively to GDP, by +0.9% in 2024. And the state did not “lose” money from the budget; it merely postponed part of the revenues, amounting to 800 million lei.

This is not an “investment boom,” but it is a healthy direction. It is an economy learning to grow through investment, not consumption, and helping companies become stronger. Strong companies invest to produce and export more, pay more taxes, and offer higher wages to employees.

Introduction

The Moldova Growth Plan, supported by the European Union, has the ambitious objective of doubling the Republic of Moldova’s economy within the next decade. To achieve this goal, a significant part of the Reform Agenda focuses on increasing the private sector’s capacity to invest in expanding businesses, raising productivity and production capacity, improving competitiveness, and strengthening resilience to shocks.

The quality of this growth is equally important. Even an economy driven by consumption and remittances can show apparently favorable developments in key macroeconomic indicators — including GDP. However, the Republic of Moldova has committed to achieving qualitative and sustainable economic growth, where investments—not consumption—are the main driving force.

For three years, Moldova has tested a tax model for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in which corporate income is taxed only upon the distribution of dividends (referred to below as the “zero rate”).

The positive results of the first three years suggest stable growth in private investment, a positive contribution to GDP, accelerated SME capitalization, increased liquidity in the private sector, and an overall boost in productivity.

In recent years, investor sentiment has been negatively affected by multiple crises generated by external factors: the pandemic, the inflationary wave, energy shocks, two devastating droughts, the war in Ukraine, the refugee crisis, as well as unprecedented hybrid attacks from Russia against the Republic of Moldova during the recent electoral cycles. Taken together, these events created a deep sense of uncertainty, resulting in postponed investment decisions—a prudent attitude from investors, especially foreign ones.

In this difficult period dominated by overlapping crises, the “zero rate,” introduced in 2023, was one of the measures that helped Moldovan companies develop and, in fact, grow despite heightened volatility and uncertainty. But the main benefits of this reform are medium- and long-term.

Continuing the measure of taxing only distributed profit will increase the equity of Moldovan firms. Investments in machinery, equipment, technology, and wages will set off a chain of positive developments—growing production, exports, and salaries—with a positive impact on economic growth.

It is important to underline that this measure should not be seen as “lost revenues” for the public budget, but rather as a postponement of those revenues.

Because the measure expires this year (2025), it is proposed to make it permanent, extending it also to large companies, as it represents an essential instrument for supporting economic growth, investment attractiveness, entrepreneurship, and economic resilience.

Context

Introduced in 2023, the zero rate on tax for undistributed SME profits was a response to a period marked by multiple crises that hit Moldovan companies. Moreover, the response to this short-term turbulence also addressed one of the main structural blockages of Moldova’s economy—the chronic lack of capital for development and the fact that access to capital remains faulty and costly. Thus, the response to a momentary crisis also tackled a systemic problem.

Between 2023 and 2025, the Republic of Moldova applied a zero tax rate to income not distributed as dividends—i.e., the money that founders chose to keep inside the company. Withdrawal of profit as dividends, however, continued to be taxed.

A central justification for this reform was that the Republic of Moldova should not tax investments and job creation, but instead allow capital to accumulate within Moldovan companies. Taxing profit that remains in the company means taxing investment, development, and job creation. Taxing dividends, essentially, means taxing consumption.

Before the reform, companies paid 12% corporate income tax at the end of the year, and later an additional 6% on the portion distributed as dividends. Thus, there was a cumulative tax of 18% (12 + 6) on income distributed as dividends.

After the reform, the tax on undistributed profit became 0%, and only profit distributed as dividends is taxed at 18%.

Let’s take an example. A company records a profit of 1 million lei at year’s end. The founders decide to withdraw half as dividends and reinvest the other half in development.

• Before the reform: The state would tax the 1 million lei profit at 12% (the company retains 880,000 lei). The 440,000 lei withdrawn as dividends would be taxed at another 6% (founders receive 413,600 lei). The company has 440,000 lei left for investment.

• After the reform: The annual profit is not taxed; only the distributed half is taxed at 18% (founders receive the same 413,600 lei). The company now has 500,000 lei available for investment.

This tax model encourages profit reinvestment by applying a 0% rate to money kept inside the company—a pro-investment measure that has already shown initial results.

The “zero rate” will be an attractive offer for investors, will support economic competitiveness, and will increase Moldova’s regional attractiveness. At present, two EU member states have adopted a similar tax model—Estonia (introduced in 1999) and Latvia (introduced in 2018).

Experience from the two Baltic states suggests that this tax model has enormous long-term benefits, clearly supporting investment and helping local companies become more efficient and productive over time, while encouraging entrepreneurship and investment activity.

Both Estonia and Latvia are recognized for exemplary ecosystems that support and develop entrepreneurship, fostering vibrant startup environments and offering attractive conditions for entrepreneurs—small and large, local and foreign.

It is important to note that the 0% tax on undistributed profit—the “zero rate”—is primarily an accelerator of investment and must not be viewed as a tax cut. In the medium term, rising firm productivity will expand the tax base, mainly through increased domestic sales as production capacity grows. This means higher VAT revenues from goods and services produced in Moldova (VAT represents only about 12% of total budget revenues). At the same time, higher wage bills in more productive companies will increase the tax base for salary-related taxes—personal income tax, social insurance, and health insurance contributions—which together account for roughly 38% of total public revenues.

The Initial Objectives of the Income Tax Reform

From the outset, in 2022, the income tax reform aimed to energize the Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) sector and targeted the following main objectives:

• Increasing company capital

• Increasing investments — a step toward an investment-based economy

• Increasing productivity by expanding production capacity

• Long-term stability and predictability

• Regional attractiveness and economic competitiveness

The Effects of the Reform After Three Years

A pro-investment measure

“We must shift from a consumption-based economy to an investment-based economy” — this phrase has become a cliché and was likely uttered at least once by every Minister of Economy in the last 20 years. The income tax reform under discussion is a firm step in that direction.

The reform has already demonstrated that it supports local companies even during crises. In a counter-cyclical development, when external factors were pulling the economy downward and uncertainty was high, Moldovan companies displayed unprecedented investment activism. Private investments have been growing for six consecutive quarters, and this dynamic will continue and accelerate if the reform that drove this behavior becomes permanent.

Since 2018, when data began being collected, private investment has never experienced such a stable period of investment activity. Even during recent years of overlapping crises, private investments contributed nearly +1% to GDP in 2024. One can only imagine what the outcome would have been in calmer times.

Note, the Q3 numbers for 2025 were just released and this trend continued with a 10.0 rate.

The additional liquidity of companies was transformed almost immediately into investments in fixed assets — machinery, equipment, vehicles, technology, software. Exactly the types of expenses that drive productivity growth. These investments increased by 12.4% in 2024 compared to 2023 (private investment only). In 2025, the trend continued, with an increase of nearly 26% in the first half of the year compared to the same period in 2024, despite an already high comparison base. This is a clear signal that the business environment invested despite volatility and uncertainty.

However, it would be a fatal mistake to conclude that we have an “investment boom.” Compared to the regional level, Moldova still suffers from a major investment deficit. We still need at least a decade to catch up, which means the measures that encourage investment must continue.

The Reform That Pulled (Fragile) Economic Growth into Positive Territory

In 2024, Moldova narrowly avoided recession, and GDP recorded modest growth of +0.1% — far below what the country needs. Still, in a scenario where private investments had not grown by 12.4%, but instead stayed flat (as in the previous two years, when they had been continuously declining — see graphic above), the year 2024 would have ended with an economic contraction of –0.8%, negatively affecting economic sentiment and future growth prospects.

And if private investments had continued the 2023 trend, when they fell by 5.9%, GDP would have declined by –1.3% (assuming all other indicators remained unchanged).

If this measure were eliminated in 2026, private investment would slow down immediately. Against the backdrop of weak and slow public investment (which continued to fall in 2024 — by 9.3% compared to 2023), this component of the economy (23% of GDP) would drag GDP downward.

Overall, the effect of the three years could dissipate quickly, remaining only a temporary statistical blip rather than becoming a sustainable and long-term source of economic growth.

We would turn the private sector — which could be the engine of economic growth — into yet another brake on it.

SME Capitalization

A central problem for Moldovan companies is access to capital — the trigger for positive developments in investment, productivity, and growth. Our companies do not have access to the same opportunities to finance investment projects on favorable terms, as is possible in a developed economy. For a company, capital means the ability to grow faster, greater capacity to make investments, funds available for expansion, and higher financial resilience to external shocks, along with better risk management.

Thanks to the “zero rate” available to SMEs, over the past three years — despite crises directly affecting the economy — company capitalization has grown at an impressive pace. SME capital has grown steadily for three years, primarily due to the “zero rate,” and if this measure is extended, this process will accelerate even more, like an avalanche, producing even better results in the coming years. Even so, a growth of over 20% in SME capital in just three years is remarkable.

Maintaining the 0% tax on undistributed profit will support a continued positive process of capital accumulation for Moldovan firms.

Impact on Budget Revenues

Above, we described some of the main positive effects of the income tax reform on the real economy. Let’s now look at what it “cost.”

As shown in the table above, in 2024 — the first year in which SMEs paid taxes under the new model based on 2023 financial results — they paid 925 million lei less in income tax, but 140 million lei more in dividend tax, for a total impact of roughly 800 million lei (40 million EUR).

Considering the positive impact on investment activity (+12.4%), the positive contribution to GDP, and other beneficial spillover effects, this may be the best-used 800 million lei in recent years. Especially since this is not lost revenue, but postponed revenue. The state will receive the money anyway. Within a few years, this impact will be offset by the expansion of the tax base and increased collections from other taxes and contributions.

But the big benefits lie in the future

To send a positive signal to the business community, investors, and the public — and to maintain the positive momentum in the private sector — the 0% tax on undistributed profit must be made permanent. This may be the most significant and impactful decision the new government can take to support sustainable economic growth based on investment and productivity.

Although in the first three years this measure has shown positive results at relatively low cost, its main benefits are medium- and long-term and will become visible in the years ahead.

Below are just a few of the medium- and long-term effects we should expect if this positive incentive for private-sector development is maintained.

Accelerating private-sector capitalization — the avalanche effect

Compared to the size of European companies, even the largest Moldovan company is tiny. We need a long-term effect that drives our companies to grow in scale. Moldovan firms lack capital, and this reform significantly helps address this issue.

The first three years — in which SME capitalization increased rapidly — represent only “the tip of the iceberg.” Year by year, this pace is expected to accelerate, and with this evolution, a virtuous circle will emerge, driving the development of Moldovan companies and helping Moldova achieve its main economic mission: building an investment-based economy.

Supporting investment and accelerating economic growth

The “zero rate” accelerates the development of Moldovan companies. The first three years of the reform show that entrepreneurs use the additional liquidity by directing part of the undistributed profit toward investment. Private investments contributed nearly 1% to GDP growth, and this process can continue, maintaining positive economic momentum.

Supporting domestic producers: productivity and competitiveness

The main destination of private investment in the past three years has been machinery, equipment, vehicles, and intellectual property (software). In other words, exactly what Moldovan companies need to increase productivity and competitiveness.

As investments translate into increased productivity, companies become more competitive, produce more, and sell more. Thus, in the medium and long term, this measure supports local producers of goods and services.

Export competitiveness

Moldova collects roughly two-thirds of VAT from imports and only one-third from domestically produced goods. The proposed measure removes part of the tax burden from domestic producers, helping them compete more effectively against imported products.

By making this income tax model permanent, Moldova introduces a long-term measure for gradually balancing the trade deficit. The competitiveness of Moldovan-made goods will increase, with positive effects on foreign trade dynamics.

Positive impact on the Current Account

Moldova has a long-term issue — a persistent current account deficit. Investments typically have a short-term negative effect on the current account because they require importing machinery and equipment. However, over time, these investments help reduce the deficit sustainably by activating new production capacities and, consequently, new export capacities.

Simplification and predictability

Beyond economic benefits, this measure contributes to the ongoing effort to simplify Moldova’s tax system, which is burdened with too many tax regimes, too many taxes, and too many exemptions — resulting in a system that is complex, costly, hard to understand, hard to comply with, and hard to administer.

If this measure becomes permanent, Moldovan companies will gain the level of predictability needed to plan and carry out multi-year investments, knowing that by retaining profit, they will have 12% more liquidity at year-end. This further accelerates investment activity.

Private sector resilience in crises

The resilience of an economy starts with the ability of a critical mass of companies to withstand shocks. The “zero rate” has also shown that entrepreneurs use liquidity prudently, building reserves and managing uncertainty more efficiently. While it is hard to quantify exactly how much “zero rate” helped companies weather the shocks of recent years, its positive contribution is easy to acknowledge.

Regional attractiveness

In recent years, the “zero rate” has been one of Moldova’s key messages to investors. Only two EU states have such a model — Estonia and Latvia. Moldova could become more competitive as the only country in the region offering this incentive. This would increase the country’s investment attractiveness, supporting foreign investment through an efficient and appealing tax policy. Combined with a very attractive tax rate of just 18% (compared to 22% in Estonia and 25% in Latvia), Moldova’s offer becomes compelling.

Sustainable economic growth

Shifting “from a consumption-based economy to an investment-based economy” means encouraging investment, and tax policy is one of the most effective tools. Moldovan companies have shown in the last three years that they have a strong appetite for investment. We can start by not taxing those investments.

Investments made by Moldovan companies will stimulate economic growth through multiple macroeconomic channels:

• By increasing aggregate demand via higher gross fixed capital formation and activity in related sectors

• By increasing productivity through technological modernization and innovation adoption

• By increasing household income through job creation and higher wages, boosting domestic consumption

• By improving external competitiveness, boosting exports, and reducing import dependency — mitigating the negative trade balance, which currently drags down economic growth

Conclusion

The Republic of Moldova is advancing rapidly toward the European Union, and the country’s existential interest is to become a full EU member as soon as possible. The EU-supported Moldova Growth Plan is an enormous opportunity for our economy. The Reform Agenda is one of the most ambitious roadmaps for improving national competitiveness, and the resources available must be used to build an investment-based economy.

A competitive, dynamic economy capable of playing an active role in the EU single market requires accelerating the development of Moldovan companies. As the results outlined above show, the “zero rate” is one of the strongest tools for achieving this objective.

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This article was originally published by the European Initiative in Romanian.

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It seems like every week we have a new story under the heading “hybrid war.” The use of this term to describe the Kremlin’s attempts to undermine or destabilize countries with so-called “hybrid” tactics is something that appears in the news almost weekly across Europe. From sabotage operations to information warfare, outside of Ukraine there is neither a hot, nor cold, war afoot - instead things seem to be simmering.

Today I want to dig into the “information warfare” aspect of “hybrid war” and unpack the word “war” that we find both phrases. Often when we discuss these activities in Moldova the framing goes something like this - Russia / Shor distributes propaganda which attempts to shape the reality of Moldovan voters. On the other side we see fact-checkers, debunking, and law enforcement efforts to remove bot accounts and similar actions. This paints a clear picture of "attacker” and “defender.” In this framing, the war is a siege with the defenders doing their very best to keep the attackers outside the city walls.

But that’s not the whole story… and it’s a fairly specific type of information warfare. There’s a whole lot more going on here and today we’re going to look more closely at that. I’m going to do it by first looking at a fascinating new book on information warfare, and then digging into what I think are 2 interesting information operations - one that Russia is conducting, and one that I suspect has recently been sprung against the Shor network by another player - someone on the offense and not manning the city walls.

“How to Win an Information War”

By Peter Pomerantsev

Journalist and author Peter Pomerantev published his latest book in March 2024. You can find it on Amazon or wherever good books are sold1. At the beginning of this year Moldova’s Cartier publishing house released his book in Romanian and Mr. Pomerantev came to Chisinau to give a talk about the book - something I attended and really enjoyed. If you’d like to see a shortened version of this talk you can watch his recent Ted Talk about the book here.

Peter Pomerantev is a Ukrainian-born British journalist who fluently speaks Russian and worked in Moscow for many years. He had a front row seat to the rise of Putin and has written multiple books on Russian disinformation and propaganda. But this book isn’t about that, not directly anyhow. Instead it is a biography of Sefton Delmer - a British journalist turned propagandist in the Second World War.

What makes the book fascinating is the focus on Delmer’s mastery of so called “black propaganda.” So let’s look at some definitions - “white propaganda” does not disguise where it comes from or what its intentions are. This is basically PR and overlaps heavily with marketing. You don’t expect a Coca Cola ad to voluntarily tell you about the dangers of diabetes - they just talk about how good it tastes! Similarly white propaganda has straightforward spin. “Gray propaganda” starts to cross that line into misleading people as to who is behind it, but typically the goal is still pretty clear. Russia’s bots vomiting out anti-EU messages are something in this area.

Black propaganda by contrast is the phone call coming from inside the house. It seeks to convince the target audience that it is being produced by the very people it seeks to discredit. The most famous, and consequential, single example of this is The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The fabricated text was published in Russia2 in 1903 and purported to be from a secretive Jewish group outlining their plot for global domination. This single piece of anti-semitic propaganda has caused enormous suffering and continues to be cited by terrible people to this day.

Pomerantev’s book outlines a much more palatable application of these dark arts. He traces how Sefton Delmer pivoted the British propaganda efforts away from their initial (failing) strategy. At first, British propaganda sought to appeal to the “good Germans” and to encourage a liberal, democratic revolt against Hitler. Delmar had lived in Germany for decades and covered Hitler’s rise to power. He had even interviewed Hitler. Delmar’s insight was that these “good Germans” were simply too few, too dispersed or too far from power, to be useful. He wanted to instead appeal to the mass of every day Germans - and that sometimes meant meeting them in unsavory places.

Delmar created dozens of propaganda efforts, employing shortwave radio broadcasts that appeared come from inside Germany itself. He created characters like “Der Chef,” a rabid Nazi who maligned Churchill and appealed to the Reich’s true believers. After gaining their trust, Der Chef would undermine the Nazi war effort - not by suggesting that democracy was good, but by saying that Hitler was too soft and Germany needed a stronger leader. He was able to pepper in examples - Nazi defeats that were being censored by official radio stations and other news that the German government sought to suppress. Through this tactic Delmar’s actors and their characters gained the trust of the audience first, then brought them the message in a manner that they would listen to.

I can’t recommend the book enough as a dive into the incredible story of Sefton Delmer, and what it says about the history of propaganda. A topic that has very clear resonance today.

Now, let’s take a look at one of Russia’s “Der Chef” equivalents - aka “Kanzlerdaddy” (Chancellor Daddy) and what it says about the Shor network’s reach. Then we’ll look at something different - a call seeming to come from within the Shor network’s metaphorical house, and what it might say about Western black propaganda efforts.

“Kanzlerdaddy” (Chancellor Daddy)

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Last week the Carnegie Endowment’s Russia and Eurasia center put out 2 interesting articles about Moldova. Both are in English and both are well worth a read.

Consolidating Power, Losing Ground: Moldova Risks Repeating Past Mistakes Ahead of Fall Elections by Balázs Jarábik

Domestic Failures Haunt Moldova’s Pro-EU Party as Election Looms by Vladimir Solovyov

Both articles look forward to the upcoming elections with trepidation and criticism of Moldova’s PAS government. I don’t agree with all of the analysis here, but this article won’t be some point by point critique2. I think that both pieces do a really good job of highlighting the criticisms of, and anxieties around PAS going into this election - specifically the fact that they are currently the only viable pro-EU force.

When we get closer to the election I plan to do a series looking at the electoral programs of each major party and analyzing their campaigns. That’s still some weeks off and we can’t really say for sure who all the competitors will be yet. We do know PAS though, the Party of Action and Solidarity founded by Maia Sandu and currently the dominant force in parliament. I want to look at what the party is and where it’s come from through the lens of the main worries and criticisms highlighted in these articles. So let’s dive in.

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Some cases are simply Kafkaesque, as with the story of a Canadian actress who spent multiple weeks essentially lost in a sprawling detention system, often chained up, until her friends alerted CNN to her story. You can watch her explain this all here.

Even more alarming are the cases of men who were deported, or more properly rendered1, to El Salvador’s notorious CECOT prison. Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was accidentally deported to El Salvador and imprisoned there indefinitely, with no contact with lawyers or prospect of a trial, has alleged that he was tortured while he was in CECOT. He was eventually returned to the United States where he faces criminal charges in an unrelated (and dubious) case.

The El Salvadorian government’s position is that all those in CECOT are “terrorists” and that they “will never leave.” These people have no contact with lawyers and have mostly not appeared in court for trials or formal convictions. Certainly, none of those deported from the US to CECOT are there serving official sentences.

Andry José Hernández Romero, a gay stylist and hair dresser who legally entered the United States for an appointment to make an asylum claim was also deported and imprisoned in CECOT. He has had no contact with lawyers or his family for months. Andry was grabbed by masked men and rendered to a place beyond the law. He almost certainly has no idea that people like us know his name and story, and that there are people advocating for his return.

You might be wondering what all of this has to do with Moldova, and it’s a fair question. As terrible as these stories are, and as alarming as it is to see the rule of law so completely rejected by the US President, this is only the beginning. On July 4th the US Congress passed the absurdly named “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” which provides around $170 billion dollars2 to support Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the construction of prisons and more. Previously, resources were a major constraint - that problem will soon be gone.

In parallel, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio was quoted by the New York Times speaking to a cabinet meeting about expanding the foreign detention system saying:

“We are working with other countries to say, ‘We want to send you some of the most despicable human beings to your countries, and will you do that as a favor to us?’ And the farther away from America the better, so they can’t come back across the border.”

…and the Times reports that Moldova is on the list of countries that may accept “deportees” from 3rd countries.

So today we’re going to look into what this and other reporting has said, how it might work and what this would mean for Moldova.

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Buckle up. We’ve never seen hybrid aggression like this before! Only if we stay calm and clear-minded can we get through this and save our democracy and independence.

Try to imagine that everything we’ve seen in recent years was just a warm-up, a series of rehearsals testing different methods of psychological warfare and attacks on the state. But from June until the end of September, the real, full-scale hybrid war is coming. Compared to what’s about to hit us, last year’s events will seem like a light breeze; now the real tornado is on its way!

Here are a few key observations:

1. You’ve probably come across these weird comments on Facebook or Instagram. No matter what the post is about, the “commenters” twist the topic to mention high prices, LGBT issues, supposed fortunes of Maia Sandu, or imaginary “dictatorship” and “uprisings” against the “anti-people regime.” These comments are clearly awkward translations from Russian, and they often make no sense. They’re written from fake profiles, automatically managed by AI-assisted programs.

2. These online efforts are backed up by actions in traditional media too, with fake letters and made-up official orders circulating widely, just like before the last elections.

3. The creation of fake news is also supported by real-life activities. Gamified misinformation campaigns on sensitive topics have been tested before. It went quite unnoticed, but before the last presidential elections, children recruited by Shor’s people or directly by Russian services (there is essentially no difference between these two) went around Chisinau putting up fake street name signs with deliberately offensive or repulsive names (usually fascist figures from history). Later, fake “petitions” appeared demanding these names to be changed. This was small-scale but served to test recruitment methods. Following the same model, Russian agents like Valico and Prizenco recruited unemployed Moldovans and sent them to Paris to vandalize walls and stir up anti-Semitism.

4. Now it’s moving to the next level and there will be no limits. Last year saw widespread posters and T-shirts with anti-European messages. These were photographed and shown on Telegram, TikTok, and Facebook ads as “evidence” of public opinion, when in reality the kids posting them were paid small rewards for completing these so called “quests.” This year it’s gone further. Now we see photos of supposed posters in the city, except nobody really sees these posters in public, only in Facebook posts. One such example is a post circulating now that supposedly advertises participation in the Pride march. It is designed to be associated with the EU and PAS. The same well known manipulation techniques. They stuck it on, photographed it, then took it off and it doesn’t exist. But the “news” is circulating on the internet. Sponsored, obviously.

5. All of this is now directly coordinated by Sergei Kirienko, the deputy head of Putin’s administration. He’s cynical to the core. Power is his only value. In this worldview, recruiting the homeless or vulnerable people to stage “LGBT kissing scenes” in parks is nothing. Expect far more provocative stunts to be staged or at least spread as images online.

6. What happens on Telegram and Facebook is child’s play compared to TikTok. Real shit, as they say. The Russians learned that simply paying local influencers (as they did before past elections) no longer works because some are too toxic. Now they’re building their own influencers from scratch. We’ve noticed several new TikTok profiles, all young women, well-spoken, with studio-like setups, clearly well-trained, but we don’t know who they are or even if they’re in Moldova. They all deliver carefully prepared messages, likely reading from scripts just like the influencers recruited in the past. These videos are heavily pushed via algorithm manipulation, the same way they did with Calin Georgescu’s content in Romania. Some are repurposed on Telegram, Facebook, and Instagram too. They haven’t given up on corrupting known influencers either. Their recent fake tourism campaign with Caras and Co follows the same old pattern, just with Victoria Furtuna as the latest front.

7. Now they’re back with massive YouTube ad campaigns. To get 180K views from YouTube ads in two days costs at least 3000 euros. Soon we’ll be nostalgic for the old-style Platon and Solnishka content, because now they feature Tardea and tired jokes about “all the gays in the world rushing to deflower him after the election.” They ran the same line in 2020, 2021, and last year, and it still circulates because they know public memory is short. Meanwhile, social media platforms don’t even bother fighting disinformation anymore.

8. Any mistake, no matter how small, made by a government official will be blown out of proportion. And if no mistake happens naturally, they’ll manufacture one, like the fake “gun license” scandal stirred up within the Internal Affairs system. Meanwhile, don’t expect Moldovan authorities (especially in justice) to go after the dirty Russian money funding these operations. Don’t expect tax authorities to touch the vloggers who take cash-stuffed bags from Shor.

9. If ordinary fakes fail, they’ll start using subtle manipulations. They have dozens of “experts” gathered over the years through different channels (Platon, Shor, Plaha), old and new politicians, media mouthpieces, all ready to sell their voices to Russian interests to shape public opinion and steer campaigns. That’s why you’ll see the same people praising Shor in the morning and sharing him as “a pro-European Russophobe” in the afternoon. This machine can switch narratives instantly.

10. Worst of all, is when criticism of the government comes from legitimate sources. It’s a trap: either stay silent and lose credibility, or criticize the government and feed Kremlin propaganda. Moscow knows how to exploit Moldova’s biggest weakness: the absence of a strong, genuine pro-European opposition. Our democracy is not resilient. Normally, the loss of PAS’s rating should have led to the rise of other pro-European parties. Instead, we have the dangerous situation where PAS’s fall risks pulling down the entire support for the pro-EU option.

11. Big provocations are coming because Kirienko is not Kozak. They tried and failed in Gagauzia. The “big protest” fizzled out. But that means they’ll now focus on the ticking time bomb of Transnistria. The humanitarian crisis there wasn’t solved by partial gas deliveries in March, just delayed. Full energy cuts are still possible. Tiraspol’s economy is collapsing: no currency, no export revenues, no imports possible. Game over.

12. What will Moscow do? Force tens of thousands of Transnistrians to vote in Moldova’s fall elections, just like they’ll force Tiraspol’s regime to obey to their instructions. The separatist region will cause as many problems as possible for the Moldovan government, distracting it with artificial crises instead of letting it campaign effectively. We might see blackouts before the vote, even military provocations in the security zone, all to push 150,000-200,000 citizens on the left of the Dniester into supporting pro-Russian forces while sowing chaos on the right bank of the Dniester.

13. Add to all the above cyber-attacks, bomb threats, psychological harassment of journalists, every trick in the hybrid war playbook, all on a scale we haven’t seen before. Don’t forget Kremlin’s global manipulation campaigns. They also do not bypass the Republic of Moldova and shape public perception here.

14. And while we’re busy with these crises, Russia is quietly setting up its main strike, the September 28 election. They’ve run countless online and offline polls to test ideas: merging Socialists, Communists, Tarlev, and Vlah into a new bloc, seeing which propagandists are best known, etc. The “Pro-Moldova Platform” comes from the same script. We’ll soon see how they will arrange their pawns, what role they will give to Furtuna and other characters openly affiliated with Shor. Even Romanian networks are being used to grow “spoiler” parties that will steal votes from the pro-European camp (Filat, Costiuc, maybe others). The Kremlin’s main tool will be the Alternativa Bloc, designed to be the kingmaker force after the election, ensuring instability and derailing EU integration. Usatii’s position remains unclear; he can flip anytime. With so many puppet parties, the Russian machine will be able to order Shor to shift votes to any one of them at the last moment. A procedure that has been tried and tested in the past.

This hybrid aggression isn’t necessarily meant to make Moldovans pro-Russian. Kremlin’s goal is to make them confused, distrustful, anxious, unsure of the future. These are the effects of the psychological warfare that Kirienko’s polit-technologists are pursuing. Such a society can be easily divided and manipulated. That is to say, turned to their own will.

What should we do?

Some are calling for censorship and limiting certain rights. I do not think these are the right methods, nor do I consider them to be effective. Nor will they be carried through, yet, and we will be putting the American administration on our heads. Things must be prevented as much as possible. The most important thing is to keep our focus – the election results.

Here’s what matters:

1. Parliamentary elections have no second round. We need to treat this as if the final vote is in one week. Stay active, speak out, engage, comment, persuade, mobilize. Like you do before a runoff.

2. Don’t trust the polls. Even if they seem to favor the government now, they don’t reflect reality. Toxic propaganda and vote-buying distort everything. People lie or hide their views in surveys. This was clear last year. The problem isn’t polling companies. It’s fear in people’s heads. Realistically, PAS can hope for no more than 35-37 seats, even with strong diaspora turnout and no Transnistrian votes. Socialist+Communists+Vlah+Tarlev, with Shor’s help, will get at least 30. If Socialists go solo, they’ll get more. Alternativa: minimum 15. Usatii: at least 10. No other pro-European party will pass the threshold. Meanwhile, Kremlin proxies will steal another 2-3%. Bloc Impreuna is failing, stuck at 2-3%. If 100,000 Transnistrian votes and 50,000 Russian migrant votes arrive, it will be a disaster.

3. Don’t waste time debunking every lie. That only drains your energy. Instead, warn people: there’s a flood of lies and manipulation online and from politicians bought by Russia. That is exactly what you should tell them – that they are paid to lie and manipulate, to divide and alienate us. Do not directly try to combat a falsehood with rational argument. Manipulation targets emotions and not reason. Don’t call people who believe the propaganda stupid, aggravated etc. Show empathy, ask questions, let them speak. Don’t deny their right to an opinion. But by all means let them know that there is a lot of manipulation, show what petty interests these propagandists have behind them, where you have such arguments.

4. Hate speech not only fails to help the European cause; it serves its enemies. The sectarian, sometimes borderline discriminatory rhetoric of PAS’s most eager supporters nearly made Stoianoglo president last autumn. This problem cannot and will not be solved at the top of the ruling party, because there is no real leadership, no discipline, no proper organization there. But at the very least, we can pull some of the more aggressive PAS and other pro-European party supporters by the sleeve and remind them not to be Putin’s useful idiots in Moldova. With such behavior, plenty of ordinary, centrist-minded citizens are being pushed straight into the arms of Russian propaganda. And this is precisely the image that Moscow is trying to build for the pro-European forces, that they are xenophobes, extremists, and so on.

5. The division among pro-European political forces and the unseriousness of PAS could cost us everything this autumn. Criticism and differences of opinion are natural, especially since PAS’s governance has been far from flawless. But turning the political mission, ensuring EU accession, into a personal drama showcase at the expense of party and national interests is not helping anyone. Nor will the arrogance and superficiality of those in PAS bring them more votes. PAS needs fresh blood; you cannot remain a 30 percent party without at least two or three figures capable of delivering an engaging speech or handling a debate without looking ridiculous, arrogant, or off-putting. The genuinely pro-European parties must join forces, not tear each other apart. And we must put pressure on them to do just that, to demand they get their act together and do what is necessary, not just what they like. Right now, a damaging view prevails, that they will be voted for simply because there are no better options, as if holding voters morally hostage. But this will not work. Maybe you do not like this truth, maybe you are even right to think so, and maybe I agree, that there are no better alternatives, but the only opinion that matters is the voters. The “lesser evil” option will not convince them. Do whatever you want, but you are obliged to offer an electoral list and a campaign format that active citizens will not be ashamed to vote for.

6. Let us remember what is truly at stake. In the three years following the elections, Moldova is expected to join the European Union. This process can only be stopped from within Chisinau. EU membership will not bring milk and honey flowing down the Bic River, but it will open entirely new paths to prosperity. This is an achievement worth fighting for. Just as it is worth fighting to ensure that not even in theory can Putin drag us into his war with Ukraine. If there is even the slightest chance that a politician might take orders from Moscow, then it is in everyone’s interest, including those waiting for the Russians with bread and flowers, to make sure such people never reach power. Those of you reading this text, speak up!

7. The population of Transnistria is being held hostage precisely because it could become decisive in the elections. I said this seven years ago. For our sake and theirs, it would be better if their voting rights were suspended, just as it happens in other regions under foreign occupation. But this will most likely not happen, because such risks must be considered two years in advance, not two months before elections. Now we can only keep in mind that everything must be calculated starting from a deficit of two hundred thousand votes.

The situation is more complicated than ever. But the first step towards salvation is to recognize and become aware of the problem.

So here we are. Fourteen problems, seven solutions. Pardon the length.

I usually don’t rush to write an article when breaking news happened, but this was rather important. At that moment people were just figuring out what “logic,” if it could be called that, the Trump Administration had used to calculate the “reciprocal” tariff rates. Articles were being written in Moldova wondering what the country had done to Trump to deserve such harsh treatment, and I wanted to write an explainer. I was happy with the article and moved on1.

Only very recently did I become aware that a lot more people than I thought had read my article, but under a slightly different title. Namely:

In English, that article is entitled “Alexandru TĂNASE // Trump's new tariffs on Moldova make no sense.” It is an Opinion piece “written” by former Minister of Justice and President of the Constitutional Court Alexandru Tănase.

He opens his “opinion” with the following line - most of which is taken from the title of my piece:

“Trump's new tariffs make no sense - especially for Moldova. This is the conclusion of David Smith from the Moldova Matters platform.”

With the exception of the second sentence there, nearly the entire article is a direct translation of my work in to Romanian. Ironically, the only real difference is that I opened my piece with “Happy ‘liberation day’ to all those who celebrate” and had some similarly playful titles and clarification which he apparently found too unprofessional for the tone he wanted to cultivate with my words.

It was kind of Mr. Tănase to mention me at the beginning of the piece, which ran as his opinion on Deschide and Timpul. Kind, but also kinda weird. I mean, with the rest of the piece presented as his opinion it appears like he is quoting me saying “Trump's new tariffs make no sense - especially for Moldova” in his article. Like he felt it was sufficient to credit me with this line, the original title, but nothing else.

Another fun piece of this is the time it was posted - 14:57 April 3rd. Almost exactly 3 hours after I sent out my article he had arranged an opinion piece and managed to translate it into Romanian - perhaps with AI. Not that I’m judging, I love using AI to read things in other languages. But it is notable that he didn’t bother with proper formatting in line with the original piece which makes the whole thing just a little bit funnier. Section titles appear as just stand alone lines and he left out all the equations and graphics. I also provided lots of links to cite the sources I was using - which naturally were omitted as well.

Who is Alexandru Tănase?

Mr. Tănase was President of the Constitutional Court from 2011 - 2017, meaning that he served much of his time there, and later as Minister of Justice in 2018, under the regime of Vladimir Plahotniuc. Tănase’s legacy in the time of state capture remains mixed. He had left the bench before the time that the most serious and shocking Constitutional Court rulings were being made as the oligarch desperately tried to cling to power. At the same time he served on the board of Plahotniuc’s bank, seemingly favored him at times in the Constitutional Court, and then moved into his government as Minister of Justice at the height of state capture. Whatever your opinion of him, he was once a titan in Moldova’s justice system - and he remains a prominent political commentator on Moldovan news programs.

As he shares his opinions there in the future, I only hope that they are indeed his. Or that he learns to use “quotation marks.”

I’ve written to both publications that ran his “opinion” piece, Deschide and Timpul, demanding a retraction and acknowledgment of the unattributed source material. Naturally, that won’t change the fact that numerous people read that article and believed at the time that it was Mr. Tănase’s own work. Nor will it impact the many people reached on social media. Plagiarism is a funny thing, it can seem like a victimless crime at times - especially when things are translated into another language. But I feel that it reflects very poorly on the people stealing another person’s work and trying to pass it off as their own. A former judge in particular should know something about stealing. We’ll see what Deschide and Timpul do with the information I sent them, but a real remedy would more properly be an acknowledgment and apology from Mr. Tănase himself.

…and since he seems to be a reader, I guess he’ll just have to do what he thinks is right.

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This week luminaries of the MAGA and MEGA movements converged in Poland for the first Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) held in that country. The conference has been held annually since 1974 and since 2017 has been held outside the US multiple times including twice in Europe - both times in Hungary. Poland is only the second European setting for the gathering.

Either by plan or coincidence the conference this year was held on May 26-27, the same week as Poland’s second round presidential elections which will be held this Sunday. In that race centrist Rafał Trzaskowski of Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s Civic Platform is facing off against far-right Law and Justice candidate Karol Nawrocki in a race that is currently too close to call.

At the CPAC conference, US Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem gave a speech saying that "You will be the leaders that will turn Europe back to conservative values." and called on Polish voters to go to the polls in support of Karol Nawrocki. She called Trzaskowski "an absolute train wreck of a leader" and said that under Nawrocki Poland would have a strong supporter in the United States. Other speeches railed against “globalists” and sought to portray the election in terms of a civilizational battle.

Just a few months ago the direct intervention of a US Cabinet Official in a foreign election would have been unthinkable. Now, House Republicans and MAGA affiliated politicians are all making their voices heard to try and sway the outcome of an ally’s election and to denigrate the EU.

America’s “Civilizational Allies”

This week the US State Department put out an essay titled “The Need for Civilizational Allies in Europe.” It was posted on the department’s new Substack newsletter which has previously hosted essays from Secretary of State Marco Rubio and others. This essay was written by Samuel Samson, billed as a Senior Advisor for the Bureau for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. Previously this department advocated for those core American values around the world.

Also this week, Politico reported that Secretary Rubio was advancing plans to essentially eliminate the Bureau for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. Priorities have changed.

In his essay, Samson starts with lofty words, tracking the American-European “Western civilizational heritage” through thinkers such as “Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, and other European heavyweights.” He goes on to cite JD Vance’s “enemies within” speech at Munich and alleges “an aggressive campaign against Western civilization itself” that he says is unfolding across Europe. Samson then calls out the alleged repression of groups that he seems to indicate represent those “civilizational allies” - Germany’s AfD, France’s Marine LePen, Hungary’s Victor Orban and right wing groups (unnamed) in Romania and Poland.

I wrote about how the MAGA movement was engaging with Europe back in February - calling it a revolutionary ideological movement determined to spread. You can read that piece here:

Now, months later with more than a few indicators backing up this thesis, we have to acknowledge a fact - the United States government, its officers and politicians within the MAGA movement, are seeking to interfere in the outcome of democratic elections in Europe. They are seeking to promote anti-democratic forces in those elections and they are spreading lies and half-truths to discredit those who oppose their movement and international organizations such at the European Union.

Also true is that the language of the US government has fundamentally changed. What is “civilizational heritage?” How are these marks supposed to be interpreted?

Moldova has an election in September - so what can be done about this? Interestingly, this week showed evidence that the Moldovan government is taking a few steps to try and adapt to this new reality.

First up, is an interesting story about how some foreign embassies in DC seem to be trying to learn the language of MAGA.

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