In winning parliamentary elections, Moldova’s incumbent party has kept the country on track to join the European Union, overcoming Russia’s efforts to sow dissension and pull the Moldovans away from Brussels and toward Moscow.
Yet the outcome of Sunday’s vote and reactions to it showed just how wide the gap has become between pro-European and pro-Russian Moldovans. As the war in Ukraine wears on, Russia militarizes and its relations with the West grow more hostile, Moldova and other former Soviet-bloc states caught between them are trying to find a stable footing.
The Moldovan government’s supporters celebrated their victory as a defeat of Kremlin interference, following a campaign plagued by disinformation from Russia and allegations that it bought off voters. Moldova reported cyberattacks on electoral systems and hoax bomb threats at voting sites for expatriates, a key bloc of support for pro-European politicians.
“You have won battle after battle against enemies of our country,” Igor Grosu, the speaker of the Parliament, said on Monday.
“The European path is our way forward,” President Maia Sandu said.
Their Party of Action and Solidarity captured 55 of the 101 seats in Moldova’s Parliament, based on preliminary results — an absolute majority, though a smaller one than it won in the last parliamentary election, in 2021.
The pro-Russian Patriotic Electoral Bloc, which had already been laying the groundwork to dispute the results, quickly argued that the vote was rigged. At a protest in front of Moldova’s Parliament building on Monday, where several hundred people gathered, many chanting and waving national flags, party leaders argued that the results, which gave it about 26 seats, were invalid.
In particular, they criticized the incumbent government for the way it handled diaspora voting.
In a country of just 2.4 million people, Moldovans who live across borders and overseas were important to the election result. But foreign polling places were more widely available in places where voters tend to be more pro-European Union, including Western Europe and North America. Moldova operated five voting stations in Belgium, 24 in Britain and 22 in the United States, but only two in Russia.
The lack of polling places in Russia reflected a shift from 2021, when there were 17.
“Hundreds of thousands of Moldovans were deprived of the opportunity to vote in the Russian Federation due to the fact that only two polling stations were open to them,” Dmitri S. Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, told reporters on Monday.
That was hyperbole. When more polling stations were open in Russia in 2021, only about 6,000 Moldovans there voted, compared with about 8,000 in the United States and about 24,000 in Britain.
Moldova’s government has argued that it does not operate more polling stations in Russia because of security concerns that have intensified since Russia invaded Ukraine. It also closed and relocated five voting stations in Transnistria, a breakaway region of Moldova and Russian stronghold, days before the vote, again citing security issues, and drawing outcry from pro-Russian groups.
“You could read that both ways,” said David Smith, an American who lives in Moldova and is an analyst of Moldovan politics. On one hand, the limited options could have prevented some Russian-aligned citizens from exercising their right to vote without traveling huge distances.
“But I buy the security argument,” Mr. Smith said. “The fear that Russia would rig the vote is more than well-founded; it is blatantly clear.”
The Moldovan government said that Russia likely spent hundreds of millions of euros on misinformation campaigns and vote buying. On Monday, the police said that some protesters were likely to have been paid by Russia.
“Russia is not done yet,” said Sergiu Panainte, the deputy director of the German Marshall Fund’s Bucharest office. “They never recognize when they lose a fight.”
President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has complained bitterly about European Union and NATO expansion into former Soviet-bloc countries, and the conflict in Ukraine is in part about his determination to keep it from joining them.
While Moldova’s parliamentary vote was a step toward the European Union, that process will take time, leaving room for further interference.
Moldova applied for E.U. membership in 2022, and it now sits on the cusp of opening negotiations with Brussels. Ms. Sandu’s party has promised to try to finish negotiations by 2028, which could allow Moldova to join the 27-member European Union a year or two later.
That is an ambitious but feasible goal, particularly if Moldova continues the speed and the quality of changes it is making to comply with E.U. membership rules, said Marta Kos, the bloc’s commissioner for expansion.
Part of the challenge is the need to determine what to do about Transnistria, an autonomous, Russia-backed region bordering Ukraine that claims independence but is not internationally recognized.
Still, some analysts hoped that the election might discourage Russia from trying so hard to sway Moldova.
Mr. Smith noted that in Sunday’s election, Russia poured huge resources into the race, but lost.
“What signal does the Kremlin take from this?” he said. “At some point, do you stop chasing that sunk cost?”
Paul Sonne and Ruxanda Spatari contributed reporting.
Jeanna Smialek is the Brussels bureau chief for The Times.
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