BRUSSELS — Just days before its crucial election, Moldova is in a standoff with Russia over foreign interference and warns it needs more Western support.
Moldovans head to the polls Sunday in a parliamentary election mired in meddling attempts that Western security officials and cyber intelligence firms say originate from Russia.
But Washington’s support to fight off cyberattacks, disinformation and other interference has dipped, in part when it dismantled its development agency USAID earlier this year.
“We lost the funding and nothing followed,” Mihai Lupascu, director of Moldova’s cybersecurity agency, told POLITICO, adding that the European Union has tried to step in.
Liliana Vițu, chair of Moldova’s Audiovisual Council that oversees traditional media, told POLITICO, “The fight that Moldova is carrying on is uneven, and it worsened once U.S. pulled its support to independent media and human rights defenders.”
“The big platforms are used to spread Russian disinformation and narratives that aim to destabilize the country,” she added.
Such pressure comes at a critical time for Moldova, a key battleground in an increasingly hot hybrid war between Russia and Western countries — marked by cyberattacks, online influencing, and domestic sabotage and meddling.
Unlike in the 2024 presidential election, when the Biden administration provided plenty of resources to counter Russian cyber and disinformation operations, this cycle sees the United States largely sitting on the sidelines.
Last year’s election was tight, requiring two rounds of voting before the pro-EU President Maia Sandu won a second term. It was also subject to widespread allegations that Moscow had been working to influence the vote against her. Moldova is a candidate to join the EU — but Russia has tried to weaken support for its European aspirations with digital campaigns and propaganda.
Sandu has issued stark warnings over past weeks. She told the European Parliament in early September that the Kremlin had unleashed an “unlimited hybrid war on a scale unseen before the full invasion of Ukraine.” On Monday, she added in an address, “People are intoxicated daily with lies. Hundreds of individuals are paid to provoke disorder, violence; and spread fear.”
Cyber diplomacy dismantled
U.S. foreign policy efforts on election integrity abroad suffered major blows since President Donald Trump took office — resulting from a mix of funding cuts, government reshuffles and the administration’s America First policy.
The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency or CISA, which shares threat intelligence and counters cyberattacks, declined to comment on any support it is providing to Moldova. The State Department also did not provide specifics on resources allocated to defend the country against election-related threats.
Both services have faced massive personnel and funding cuts since the Trump administration took over in January. Around a third of CISA employees departed as part of DOGE-led cuts, while all U.S. election security efforts at the cyber agency were halted earlier this year. At the State Department, the Bureau of Cyberspace and Digital Policy was divided into three other offices, and top leaders left.
Trump’s pushback against support for foreign election integrity matches up with his domestic agenda. The U.S. president signed an executive order in March that, if implemented, would make it more difficult to cast a ballot in U.S. elections. Till yet, courts have blocked that order.
While EU organizations have partially stepped in to compensate for the loss of U.S. support, that coverage does not fully replace what was previously provided. Moldova has continued to work with private U.S. companies, sometimes paying for services with EU project funds.
The “constant support” from Washington has stopped, and that “has had a significant negative impact,” said Romanian European Parliament member Siegfried Mureșan, who leads the institution’s delegation to the EU-Moldova parliamentary association committee.
The U.S. still funds select projects, he added. The funding “is more volatile, but it hasn’t disappeared completely.”
Leaks and QR codes
The risks are already evident. The European Digital Media Observatory said last week that in the final stretch of the election campaign, “The information warfare landscape continues to evolve with increasing intensity.” This ranges from mass online influence campaigns to investigations into voter bribery and paying people to protest.
In August, Moldova’s parliament suffered a hack and leak exposing more than 300,000 emails and the names of parliamentary staff. Lupascu said the breach was likely carried out by a state-sponsored actor exploiting outdated IT infrastructure — a common problem across government institutions.
“They published [the correspondence] on several websites,” Lupascu told POLITICO. “We tried to take it down, but they kept reposting. Some of those emails have already been used to spread fake news.”
Russia has been building up its intervention for many months, leading cybersecurity firms pointed out.
Microsoft reported that the Russian-affiliated hacking group Storm-1679 “shifted focus to the upcoming Moldovan parliamentary elections around April 2025,” an earlier timeline of interference than for other recent elections.
Google said on Saturday that it had “terminated more than 1,000 channels since June 2024 for being part of coordinated influence operations targeting Moldova.”
Cyber intelligence firm Recorded Future has tracked “multiple Russian-linked influence operations” aimed at undermining Sandu and promoting narratives that Moldova is incompatible with the EU.
In some cases, hybrid influence campaigns have taken highly unconventional forms.
Natalia Spinu, director of the European Institute for Political Studies in Moldova and former head of the country’s Computer Emergency Response Team, said one tactic linked to networks sponsored by fugitive oligarch Ilan Shor involved placing a QR code on the back of a church icon distributed during services. Scanning it led citizens to a Telegram channel where they could be paid for their vote or for spreading disinformation.
Europe steps up
The European Commission has been rushing to deploy a cyber reserve — a team of private-sector cybersecurity experts. It’s the first deployment of the reserve since it was created under a new EU Cyber Solidarity Act, though just how much funding the reserve is committing to Moldova remains unclear.
The EU is also extending its regular work to counter disinformation in EU countries to Moldova. In July, the Commission announced a new hub for fighting misinformation in Ukraine and Moldova. These hubs are part of the European Digital Media Observatory, bringing together experts in different regions to fight foreign interference. Six of these hubs will receive €8.8 million for a maximum of three years.
The EU executive also conducted a stress test with Google, Meta and TikTok, where they simulated responses to hybrid threats in preparation for the election.
Vițu, chair of the Audiovisual Council, said that much of the EU’s support has gone into Moldova’s StratCom center, providing expertise in mapping disinformation campaigns and hybrid attacks. Moldova has also been working to bring its laws in line with EU rules on content moderation, she said.
While Vițu praised these initiatives as the “best way” to fight Russian influence, she acknowledged doubts over their effectiveness in fully mitigating threats. Ultimately, the country is at “the mercy of the very big platforms,” she said.
Concerns have even reached Capitol Hill, where not all members are happy that the U.S. is largely sitting out the upcoming election.
Senate Foreign Relations Committee ranking member Jeanne Shaheen, a Democrat, and Thom Tillis, a Republican, sent letters to Meta and Alphabet earlier this month urging the platforms to prevent the spread of propaganda during the Moldovan election.
Bipartisan members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, including Chair James Risch and senators Chris Murphy, Chuck Grassley, Ted Budd and Chris Coons, joined the two lawmakers last week in putting out a joint statement stressing that there is “clear and overwhelming evidence” of Russian interference in the upcoming Moldovan election.
“Moldovans, and the peoples of all nations, deserve the right to pursue the future they want for their country free from foreign interference,” the senators said. “The United States aims to help them preserve this right, while Russia seeks to deny them of it in order to advance its own geopolitical agenda.”
Gabriel Gavin contributed to this report.
Maggie Miller reported from Washington.
This article was updated.
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