Russia is planning to sabotage a referendum on EU integration in Moldova, Chișinău’s spy service has warned, as EU diplomats fear bad “surprises” also in the Western Balkans.
“Attempts are being made to compromise a referendum on European integration, interfere in the presidential elections, as well as discredit government institutions and politicians who support Moldova’s accession to the European Union,” said Alexandru Musteata, the director of the Intelligence and Security Services (SIS), in the Moldovan capital on Tuesday (5 March).
Russia’s tactics included “extensive use” of social-media platforms, such as Telegram and TikTok, to provoke “social clashes” and to “incite inter-ethnic hatred”, the SIS said in a report the same day.
Tactics also included using pro-Russian oligarchs, such as Ilhan Shor, to create “public order crises” by putting mobs on the street in Chișinău or in Gagauzia, a Russia-friendly region in Moldova.
“Shor’s main task for 2024 is to compromise the results of the [EU] referendum,” Musteata told press.
“Protests will continue to be used as a tool to undermine trust in the current government,” he said.
No date has yet been set for Moldova’s referendum on EU membership, as it prepares to formally open accession talks before June.
The country’s pro-EU president, Maria Sandu, will seek re-election in autumn.
Shor is a fugitive wanted for embezzling Moldova’s top bank, who is also on an EU blacklist for plotting previous pro-Russian coups.
The SIS warning was the latest in a series of alerts about Russian attempts to destabilise Moldova.
Russia-puppet authorities in Transniestria, a breakaway Moldovan region, also jangled Western nerves by asking Moscow to “protect” them from alleged Chișinău “pressure” on 28 February.
The EU has helped Moldova to double its defence budget and to buy a new radar to monitor Russian threats.
And the EU foreign service fears Russia could be planning a provocation in the region to frighten Western leaders into appeasement on the Ukraine war.
“I think Moscow is planning many surprises for us this year, that might even make [Alexei] Navalny’s killing look like small news,” an EU source said, referring to a well-known Russian dissident, who died in prison on 16 February.
“The more that we in the West think that [Russian president Vladimir] Putin is crazy, wildly unpredictable, the easier it is for him to divide us and break our resolve,” the EU contact added.
For her part, German foreign minister Annalena Baerbock voiced similar concerns on Russia’s role in the Western Balkans also on Tuesday.
“The Russian war of aggression is not only being waged with bombs, missiles, drones and the worst attacks on the civilian population in Ukraine, but that, as I hear again and again here in the Western Balkans, also includes hybrid warfare,” she told press in Sarajevo.
She said in Monday in Podgorice: “We cannot allow ourselves grey areas anywhere in Europe and must do everything we can together to close flanks that Russia can use for its policy of destabilisation, disinformation, and infiltration”.
Albania, Bosnia, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Montenegro, and Serbia have also joined the queue to EU entry, breaking out of Russia’s old sphere of influence.
Meanwhile, Putin nonplussed EU diplomats in a state-of-the-nation speech in Moscow on 29 February by failing to mention Transniestria’s cry for help.
He did threaten the use of nuclear weapons, after French president Emmanuel Macron mulled sending Western soldiers to Ukraine.
But Putin was more softly spoken than some had experts expected.
“What is rather surprising about the actual content of the nuclear message is that Putin opted for a brief and vague and perhaps the softest possible response to Macron’s challenge. He stated the obvious instead of going into specifics, which he is fond of doing,” said Pavel Podvig, a researcher at the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research in Geneva, Switzerland.