MEGA in Moldova: A Made-for-MAGA Moment
Banned speakers, phony websites and a new phase of the hybrid war
Surprise! A MEGA Conference is Happening Right Now in Chisinau
Yesterday, July 28th, Moldova awoke to the surprise news that the 4th edition of the international Make Europe Great Again (MEGA) conference was being held in Chisinau - right now. Specifically, the conference is being held at the Radisson Blu hotel on July 28th and 29th.
Yesterday news broke that several people traveling to the conference as speakers were denied entry to Moldova put on planes for return flights. This included Czech MEP Ondřej Dostál, spokesperson for the Greek soverigntist party NIKI, and American Conservative activist Brian Brown.
George Simion, a leader in the MEGA movement, claims that more than 10 AUR party leaders were also stopped and prevented from entering Moldova.
Today we’re going to unpack who was banned, why, what the conference is about and how it fits into Russia’s hybrid war against Moldova.
Who is Brian Brown?
The most prominent of the men banned from entering Moldova and attending the conference is American conservative activist Brian Brown. ZdG noted that Brown is a “close associate of Donald Trump Jr” and the local press has largely referred to him as a conservative activist aligned with MAGA. He also has deep ties with Kremlin-linked politicians and groups in Russia and around the region.
Brown is the President of IOF, the International Organization for the Family. IOF is the organizer of the World Congress of Families (WCF), of which Brian Brown is also the President.
WCF and Brown have deep ties to Russia going back decades. The organization was born in 1995 in Moscow during a meeting between Russian and American conservative figures. The NYTimes has reported that this meeting, and the actions of WCF subsequent to it, have directly led to current alignment of the Republican party and Putin’s Russia. They state that the organization’s "aim was to foster a global network of like-minded conservatives to fight feminism, homosexuality and abortion."
The WCF is designated as a “hate group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center. It is credited with the lobbying effort that led to the passage of Russia’s 2013 anti-gay-propaganda law, as well as similar efforts that Russia is now exporting (often by force).
In 2018 Brown traveled to Moldova where then President Igor Dodon hosted that year’s World Congress of Families.
Who else was banned from the conference?
In addition to Brian Brown, Czech MEP Ondřej Dostál was denied entry to Moldova. In response to this his posted:
"There is a first time for everything. Even for being deported, as an MEP, from an EU candidate country. Democracy in action,"
Dostál is a member of the Stačilo! (enough) party which bills itself as left-wing, but is understood to be a repackaging of the country’s old Communist Party. It is populist and has far-right and eurosceptic positions.
Greek politician Dimos Thanasoulas was also banned. He is listed as a spokesman for the soverigntist party NIKI. His main political position is a staunch opposition to LGBTQ+ rights.
Ondřej Dostál and Dimos Thanasoulas were denied entry and put on planes back to their point of origin. Dostál had his diplomatic passport confiscated and later returned to him when the plane landed.
Brown Was Eventually Let In…
After waiting hours for a flight that would remove him, Brian Brown was eventually given official papers declaring him persona non grata and he was escorted to a removal flight. He recorded many direct to camera videos of this process, with this one occurring just as he was leaving the airport for his plane.
Shortly after recording this video, Brown was placed on the plane and then informed at the last moment that the decision was reversed and he would be allowed to enter Chisinau. He thanked the US Embassy for intervening on his behalf writing:
In his various videos before ultimately being let in, Brown claimed that he was being deported because he is a conservative, railed against Moldova’s government as an oppressor of free speech and hailed JD Vance’s Munich Speech1 as an accurate description of what was going on in Europe - especially Moldova.
Why Were they Banned?
Moldova’s Security and Intelligence Service (SIS) put out a statement justifying the entry bans for several people affiliated with the MEGA event. In it they wrote:
“These individuals were to participate in an event with obscure organizers, without transparency of financing and with dubious connections to the Shor criminal group. Based on the information, some participants and organizers aim to promote an extremist agenda, to undermine the territorial integrity and democracy of the Republic of Moldova. For example, one of the participants is a promoter of Russia's war against Ukraine, but also a loyal supporter of Russia's occupation of territories that do not belong to it, using the hostile narrative of "protecting the interests of oppressed Russian citizens", referring also to the Transnistrian region.
Against the backdrop of tense regional security, SIS draws attention to a series of actions camouflaged as civic or cultural events, which are part of a broader spectrum of hybrid actions undertaken by Russia on the territory of the Republic of Moldova. These actions will intensify, and the institutions will exercise their legal mandate and will always act in the interests of the Republic of Moldova and to protect the constitutional order.”
SIS went on to call on Moldovan citizens to be aware that “Participation, even unintentionally, in such actions orchestrated by external forces brings with it potential legal risks, which are documented by law enforcement.”
Day 1 of the MEGA Conference in Chisinau
In spite of the fact that SIS called the event an element of Russia’s hybrid war against Moldova, and the bans, the conference went forward. In pre-event literature (we’ll get to what “pre-event” means below), the conference was titled “Moldova between East and West” and billed as follows:
"the MEGA conference will be held under the auspices of a major international distinction, namely the distinction between the world of Donald Trump and the world of George Soros – the world of the American president, re-elected to the White House, and the world of American billionaire George Soros, forged, built, implemented, and supported since the beginning of 1990."
On the first day, July 28th, George Simion opened the conference via video link. He stated (in part):
“As you know, I am banned from entering the Republic of Moldova and what happened in the last few days with the participants of the MEGA event in Chisinau is horrible. Dictatorship in its purest form, supported by the current administration of the European Commission and Ursula von der Leyen. (…)
He went on to speak against Moldovan sovereignty calling the country an integral part of Romania.
Brian Brown also spoke, opening "I haven’t slept for about 55 hours" and going on to recount his personal odyssey. He went on to equate the attempt to block his entry with Communism and the event press release notes that this is an abuse of the Maia Sandu “regime.”
Other speakers continued in a similar vein, with the exception of Lord Barron Martin Callanan, a member of the UK’s House of Lords. He spoke about the need to support Ukraine calling Russia’s invasion “not only a grave breach of international law, it is a direct attack on the principles of freedom, democracy and national sovereignty that we, as a Conservative movement, deeply value.2”
Moldova’s Attendees - The Usual Suspects
From the Moldovan side, Vasile Costiuc Democracy at Home party, Victoria Furtună of the Moldova Mare party, former Prime Minister Vlad Filat and other figures affiliated with AUR attended. MP Gaik Vartanean was photographed in the corridors of the event. Vartanean is Chisinau Mayor Ion Ceban’s top lieutenant and the second figure in the MAN party.
Economic analyst Veaceslav Ioniță and Igor Munteanu were also seen at the event.
Taken together, it represents an interesting mix of Shor affiliates and political opportunists. We’ll circle back to the Moldovan politicians attending the conference, and their contributions to the discussions, after the event concludes.
Why was the Media Surprised by the MEGA Conference?
I won’t speak for all of the media here, but I for one was taken off guard by this news. Moldova Matters has closely followed the MEGA movement ever since Elon Musk launched it earlier this year. For many in Moldova, the first announcement that this was happening came when individuals started posting videos from the airport saying that they were banned from entering. How is it possible that an international conference of far-right groups could be held in Chisinau without it being broadcast in advance? The likely answer is - intentionally.
In the pre-event announcement on the mega2025.eu website organizers3 state that the conference is open to the public and the media, but that registrations must be received by July 27th. We don’t know when this announcement was published. It is not on social media and all of the social media links on the mega2025.eu website are fake4. We have been unable to find any social media pages affiliated with the event, or announcements pertaining to it.
Looking at the Wayback machine, the first recorded snapshot of the event announcement is on July 28th, one day after the registration deadline expired. This is consistent with google’s listing of the page having been indexed 1 day ago. At the same time, it is not proof that the page was published yesterday. What we can say definitively, was that this even was not widely publicized.
However, there are other issues with the website that lend credibility to the theory that it isn’t what it claims to be.
“Road Trip” with MEGA?
The mega2025.eu website is, to say the least, incomplete. Here is what the About page looks like:
When you click on the link for the Chisinau event, you find no information:
Oddly, most of the rest of the website is the same. A mixture of “lorem ipsum” placeholder text and links to past and future conferences that are also devoid of details. Moldova Matters has previously reported on links between past MEGA conference speakers and Ilan Shor. At the time of writing that article, in March, mega2025.eu was a totally different website with detailed information about past conferences and speakers - all that information has since been wiped out.
In that version of the website, which you can see in past captures by the Wayback machine, there is much more information. Calls to reserve seats at future conferences, contact numbers, and information that the conference was a joint partnership between the AUR party and ECR Group. It listed agendas, speakers at past events and more. The last capture of that old site was in late March, after which there are no Wayback machine captures until July 28th5.
“Burner” Websites
Beyond the front end lack of content and fake Latin text, the backend configuration of this website is all wrong. Its DNS records don’t resolve, there are issues with the robots.txt crawler file (which is also rather passive aggressive), services that check if a website if offline say that it is and there are numerous other issues.
While it is totally possible that the webmaster behind mega2025.eu is an idiot who has horrifically misconfigured their website, the more likely explanation is that this is a burner site. If you have access to a VPN and try to load the site from other countries - you’ll find that it simply isn’t there. The website mega2025.eu is only viewable in Moldova6.
Very likely it was not available in Moldova either until yesterday morning, after the conference speakers were stopped at the border. And just as likely it will be gone soon after this conference when its purpose has been served7.
MEGA Chisinau - What’s Going on Here?
The conference is ongoing and no doubt there will be more anti-PAS, anti-Maia Sandu and eurosceptic statements to report on. Overall, the purpose of this conference is likely not about the speeches at all - it’s likely about getting MAGA attention.
Shor’s network has had a long term focus on promoting narratives that undermine Moldova’s EU integration and the current government. Top among these are:
That the Moldovan government is an opponent of free speech and regularly censors those who don’t agree with them
That the pro-EU orientation is a facade and that the Moldovan government oppresses political enemies
That Maia Sandu, PAS and others are part of a globalist, Sorosist8 plot to deprive the country of its sovereignty
None of this is true, but this event is already being promoted on X with all of these components. Highlighting people who were blocked from attending, calling it a plot centering free speech issues, etc. It is notable that George Simion’s posts on the conference are all in English - his intended audience is not inside of Moldova.
Ultimately, I’ve written before about how Kremlin / Shor / MEGA political forces will try and draw MAGA leaders into a discussion about Moldova’s elections. Events like this are likely designed to produce red-meat for the far-right and ideally cause blowback from powerful political figures in the United States.
We’ll follow this story and update you in the Weekly Roundup.
You can read my past piece on this topic in the following post
Perhaps he was invited by accident?
Let’s be clear that we have no idea who the “organizers” are - who paid for this conference, etc. None of that information is available on their website.
Instead of pointing to a facebook page associated with MEGA, they redirect to facebook.com. All of the social links are the same.
Very possibly the new capture was triggered by recent searches. The Wayback machine may not have crawled the site simply because very few people were reading it. Alternately, the site could have been down or set in such as way as to reject crawlers.
I checked the US, Germany, Romania and Russia.
It’s worth noting that Moldova Matters has previously reported on astroturfed conferences arranged by Ilan Shor to try and advocate for the removal of sanctions against him. The websites for those events, and those of the organizations organizing them, are all gone now.
At some point we may as well just start saying “International jewish conspiracy” - it is surely what they mean
Sorry but I am failing to understand why the whole wonderful idea of Making Europe Great Again should not be DIRECTLY tied to destroying Vladimir Putin who is committed to destroying the European Community or Trump’s own MAGAworld with an apparently similar worldview !?
See all of this unfold in Andelman Unleashed also on Substack and a great companion read to the incomparable Moldova Matters !!
;-))