Moldova’s deputy prime minister has blamed Russia for a cyberattack targeting the country’s electoral commission this week, just days before a crucial parliamentary election.
Doina Nistor, the country’s deputy prime minister and digital minister, told POLITICO in an interview on Thursday that the country’s Central Electoral Commission has now been secured. “This was a vulnerability that was identified and is now fixed,” she said.
The cyberattack is part of a wider hybrid campaign by Russia against Moldova that was planned “months in advance” and seeks “to destabilize our democracy,” Nistor said on a visit to Brussels.
Moldovans will go to the polls on Sunday in an election mired in meddling attempts that Western security officials and cyber intelligence firms say originate in Russia. Moldovan President Maia Sandu told the European Parliament on Monday that Russia is spending “hundreds of millions of euros” to subvert the election.
In one of the most recent attacks, hackers hijacked Wi-Fi routers to attempt to overload the servers of Moldova’s Central Electoral Commission, the country’s police chief Viorel Cernăuțeanu told local media on Wednesday, in what is known as a distributed denial-of-service attack.
Like Ukraine, Moldova is a “laboratory” for confronting “some of the most advanced hybrid threats of our times,” Nistor said. “This makes us a natural test bed for Europe, a place where we can test new tools [and] new policies.”
According to Stanislav Secrieru, national security adviser to Sandu, “The scale of Russian interference today far exceeds what we saw in 2024.”
“We’re seeing unprecedented efforts: more money to buy votes, more AI-driven disinformation amplified by troll networks, and more resources dedicated to orchestrating street violence. Russia is pulling out all the stops to tip this election,” he told POLITICO.
Support for Moldova from the United States has waned, in part when it dismantled its development agency USAID earlier this year, putting more of the burden on Europe.
The European Commission has rushed to deploy a cyber reserve — a team of private-sector cybersecurity experts — to Moldova. It’s the first deployment of the reserve since it was created under the EU’s new Cyber Solidarity Act.
Access to the reserve is a “huge milestone,” Nistor said, adding that support from Europe on cyber “is first and foremost the most important one.” However, the U.S. is still offering some support via its embassy, she said.
Moldova is also working directly with countries including Romania, Sweden, Estonia and the United Kingdom to get structural help in the future, she said.
Gabriel Gavin contributed to this report.
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