Russia’s steady westward advance following the fall of Avdiivka has Europeans in a panic. Frenzied calls between German generals agonizing about giving long range missiles to Ukraine get intercepted by Russia and EU governments quarrel over French proposals to send soldiers to stop Putin as he brandishes his latest ICBMs and slips on aviator glasses to pilot a Tupolev bomber around Finland. Poland is hosting big NATO exercises this month to ward off Vlad the Impaler who is more likely eyeing Ukraine’s vulnerable Balkan neighbor, Moldova, ridden by ethnic tensions that his revamped secret services are experts at manipulating.
Its poorly equipped 6,000-man army would be unable to cope with even low intensity attacks for very long.
A poor ex Soviet republic about the size of Maryland where ethnic Russians rule a sliver of territory garrisoned by 2,000 Russian troops, Moldova seems ripe for the picking by Putin who used the purported victimization of ethnic Russians in Ukraine’s Donbass region to justify his “special military operation” entering its third year. Moldova’s decidedly pro Western government under president Maia Sandu, an ethnic Romanian, is primarily focused on joining the EU and has managed to resist attempted power grabs by Moscow so far. This week, she called for the withdrawal of Russia’s military from the territory of Transnistria. But Putin persists. (READ MORE from Martin Arostegui: Russia Is Winning in Ukraine. The US Should Step Up)
Controlling Moldova would strengthen Russia’s position in NATO’s Balkan underbelly and sever Ukraine’s road and rail links to its Danube river ports, a vital alternative route for grain exports as Russia intensifies missile strikes against its Black Sea ports of Odessa. The opening of a new southern front would also greatly complicate matters for Ukraine’s overstretched army if it has to divert diminishing resources away from central sectors of the front.
Russia tried coordinating a coup in Moldova with the invasion of Ukraine back in February 2022 but the plan collapsed when Russian forces failed to take Odessa. A pro-Russian insurrection orchestrated by the Kremlin’s secret service FSB which recruited top Moldovan politicians petered out as the Russians were pushed back to the Dnieper River and their Black Sea Fleet’s flagship was sunk. The Moldovan government further broke up the plan with the arrest of a former president accused of leading the rebellion.
Russia tried again in 2023 with a more wide ranging operation organized this time by its military intelligence service GRU which took over foreign operations from the FSB following the Kremlin spy unit’s failures during the Ukraine invasion. Violent protests staged in the Moldovan capital Chișinău were coordinated with false flag RPG attacks in Transnistria, which Russian propaganda blamed on Romanian nationalists. The GRU went so far as flying in football hooligans from Serbia to stage incidents.
Once again, Moldova’s efficient internal security unit, the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) headed by officers deeply familiar with Russian spy methods, having themselves undergone KGB training when Moldova formed part of the Soviet Union, broke up the scheme financed through the oligarch Ilan Shorr, who used his dual Israeli nationality to launder Russian funds and flee the country. He is believed to be funding a separatist movement among Moldova’s Turkik minority in the south of the country with Russian backing .
This past week, SIS revealed that Russia is preparing another “intervention at an unprecedented scale” to sabotage the re-election of president Sandu and a referendum on joining the EU scheduled for this fall by “degrading institutions and candidates promoting European integration.” SIS chief Alesandru Musteata, says that Moscow plans “hybrid attacks” against Moldova in 2024-2025 . (READ MORE: Russian Support for Catalan Separatists Keeps Spain’s Socialists in Power)
Part of the strategy involves “extensive use of social media to promote protests and confrontations inciting interethnic hatred and promoting disinformation” as well as using channels such as Tik Tok and Telegram to promote pro-Russian political figures. Cyber attacks would also be launched to crash official websites and confuse reporting of electoral data.
A recent analysis by the Royal United Services Institute, semi-official think tank of the British ministry of defense says that after “the failure of the second attempt to destabilize Moldova, Russian disinformation targeting the country became much more consistent and mutually reinforcing. Russia shifted to strengthen the public association between Moldova’s aspiration to join the EU and President Maia Sandu while at the same time targeting Romanian nationalists to amplify their voices, and in doing so exacerbate the threat felt by Moldova’s Russian-speaking population to increased alignment with Europe.”
Forty-five Russian intelligence agents have been expelled from Moldova since last year, including much of the embassy staff and technicians operating about a dozen Russian communication antennas in Chișinău. But the GRU may now be relying more on “illegal” or deep cover agents to conduct “active measures” abroad, as part of the unit’s recent restructuring, according to RUSI.
Politicians suspected of harboring close ties with the Kremlin remain in powerful positions. It’s noted that the mayor of Chișinău, known for past Russian sympathies, was in Moscow at the time that Russia invaded Ukraine. Russia spent about $50 million, much of it covertly, to fund socialist and communist anti-government parties in recent local elections, according to a high level Moldovan official who spoke to The American Spectator on condition of anonymity. The government won with a plurality of 30 percent but its support could evaporate if the economy tanks.
Last month, Transnistria’s Supreme Council of the Perestrovian Moldavian Republic appealed for Russian “defense and protection” against “growing pressures” from Sandu’s government which levied new tariffs on its agricultural goods. Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov immediately accused the Moldovan government of “applying economic pressure on Transnistria” and “moving in Kyiv’s footsteps” by “discriminating against Russian speakers” and “blocking” negotiations.
Shares in Moldovan companies fell on the Budapest stock exchange following the pronouncements. “Russia is trying to leverage fear,” according to a Moldovan official. “If people think that joining the EU will trigger Russian reaction, they could vote for pro-Russian candidates in the elections and scare away investors,” he says. (READ MORE: Putin’s March to the Red Sea)
Russia can black out Moldova, which gets 80 percent of its electricity from Transnistria powered by Russian gas, with a flip of a switch. Moldova could connect to neighboring Romania’s power grid but its higher EU prices would fuel inflation, according to officials. Transnistria’s foreign minister Vitaly Ignatov, who is “Russia’s man” according to Moldovan officials, is seeking “money from the Russians,” according to the sources.
Moscow could be taking a gamble by cutting electricity to Moldova as it would deprive Transnistria of its main source of revenue and push Chișinău further into the arms of the EU. Supporting a mini puppet state in the middle of a war could become a drain for the Kremlin if Sandu’s government remains resilient.
It would be difficult for Russia to resort to a full military invasion as long as Ukraine can deny the local air space and the Black Sea to Russia, which lost another frigate to Ukranian drones this week. But the GRU could engineer covert military operations by activating a Wagner type paramilitary company in Transnistria supplied clandestinely through Serbia. Russian drones launched from Crimea, already crossing Moldovan skies to strike Ukraine’s Danube ports, could support undercover Spetsnaz teams with targeted hits on key objectives in Chișinău.
Moldova cannot be fast tracked into NATO because neutrality is enshrined in its constitution. Its poorly equipped 6,000 man army would be unable to cope with even low intensity attacks for very long. President Sandu recently signed a security agreement with France which is supplyng a radar system and has special forces stationed in neighboring Romania. French president Emanuel Macron just announced that France is opening a “military mission” to train and advise Moldova’s armed forces. But Putin is not scared of the French, who he recently chased out of Africa.
Chișinău has been relying primarily on U.S. Ukrainian aid for its security, according to officials. That’s now in doubt and Europe’s military bureaucracies, which are having a hard time securing sensitive teleconferences among their top brass and bean counting artillery shells for Ukraine, don’t appear to be in shape to deal with a GRU engineered “gray zone” in Moldova.