Moldova voted in favor of joining the European Union by a narrow margin, in a referendum that came down to just a few thousand votes amid accusations of Russian interference.
A razor-thin victory for pro-EU forces was virtually certain with 99.2 percent of votes counted as of late Monday morning. 50.3 percent of Moldovan voters backed changing the constitution to include EU membership, with 49.7 percent opposing the move.
During a long and nerve-wracking night for officials and activists in the Eastern European nation, the “no” campaign maintained a lead until near the end. Moldovans inside the country voted against the pro-EU campaign, but ballots cast by people living abroad swung the result at the climax.
At midnight, with more than 90 percent of votes counted and “yes” lagging by almost 10 points, pro-Western President Maia Sandu held an emergency press conference in which she blamed the early tally on “foreign forces” using cash and propaganda to influence the result.
However, overwhelming support for membership from the hundreds of thousands of Moldovans living in European countries, the U.S. and Canada saw the gap narrow.
Siegfried Mureșan, a Romanian MEP who chairs the parliament’s liaison committee working on Moldova’s accession to the EU, said the knife-edge passage of the constitutional referendum “represents a victory for the people of the Republic of Moldova and a defeat for Russia.”
“I will ensure that we, as the European Union, respect the will of the Moldovan people expressed in the referendum and provide all the necessary support for the EU accession process,” he added.
Moscow stands accused of launching a massive campaign of vote buying, funneling cash through its proxies into the accounts of ordinary voters, as well as using social media to sow fears about the prospect of EU membership leading to a direct conflict with Russia.
This story is being updated.
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