Moldova's Kremlin-Linked Influence Ecosystem After the 2025 Defeat: Rebuilt to Look Domestic

The Operation Russia Lost in 2025

To understand what survived, it is necessary to begin with what Russia built. Moldova's 2024 presidential election and EU referendum were the first stage. The parliamentary election a year later was the second. Together they decided whether the European course would be embedded in the Constitution, retained by the presidency and backed by a working majority in parliament.

The first stage almost succeeded. Șor's network did not operate like a conventional campaign, it combined legal political organizations with hidden finance and mass recruitment. Evrazia, a Russia-based organization associated with Șor, offered programs and payments. Promsvyazbank provided accounts and cards. Telegram bots instructed recipients how to register and receive money. Local coordinators knew which voters had joined. Police said the system reached more than 130,000 people and transferred $39 million during September and October 2024.

The objective was to defeat the EU referendum and support candidates favorable to Moscow. (13)

By 2025, the same model had acquired a purpose-built digital layer. According to information reviewed by EK Stratcom, the TAITO application, operated through Telegram for Șor's Victory bloc, required new users to upload an identity document, a video selfie and contact details before placing them in closed regional chats. Coordinators used those chats to assign protest attendance, street agitation and the production or distribution of political content. Approximately 32,300 users had registered by September 2025. A separate Telegram bot called Bankgreenmanager connected TAITO users to payment and conversion channels linked to Promsvyazbank. The system therefore joined recruitment, tasking, identity verification and payment in one operational chain. In 2024, Sandu won a second presidential term, and the referendum passed with 50.35 percent of the vote, embedding EU accession in the constitutional framework.

These were two victories for Moldova's pro-European leadership, but the narrow referendum result also highlighted the vulnerability of a strategic vote held under intense Russian interference.

The Kremlin's 2025 plan widened the operation beyond Șor's organizations. The election-observation report of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (14) describes three simultaneous lines of effort. Economic pressure used gas supplies, transport restrictions and the possibility of electricity disruption to force the government into crisis management. Political interference financed proxies, protected vote-buying networks and promoted a bloc that could appear pro-European before partnering with openly pro-Russian forces after the election. Information operations used fear narratives, fabricated material, deepfakes, impersonation, church mobilization and campaigns aimed at discouraging Moldovans abroad from voting.

Cyber pressure accompanied each line. Election systems, the airport, media organizations and other public infrastructure were targeted by denial-of-service attacks and phishing. Operators prepared scenarios to clone election-result pages and disrupt communications with polling stations abroad. More than 1,000 incidents were recorded over the year. The online campaign was similarly industrial. Operation Overload, also known as Matryoshka, imitated Western and Moldovan media in several languages. Storm-1516 published staged videos. Portal Kombat, also known as the Pravda network, used a large group of websites to republish Russian state-aligned content as if it were local news. G7 monitors (15) found that the activity peaked on election weekend.

The physical component was visible in the final week. Moldovan police conducted 250 searches against more than 100 people in an investigation into Russian-coordinated preparations for mass disorder. Seventy-four people were detained. Security officials said (16) Moldovan citizens had been trained in Serbia in tactics for breaking police lines and provoking clashes.

The point was not only to win votes. It was to create several possible routes to the same outcome: a favourable parliamentary majority, a disputed result, a crisis around the count or street pressure on the government.

The Church supplied local credibility. The Metropolis of Chișinău and All Moldova is the country's largest Orthodox jurisdiction and is canonically subordinate to the Moscow Patriarchate. The institution contains many clergy and believers with no role in political operations. Within it, however, selected priests were recruited through paid pilgrimages to Russia, Promsvyazbank cards and parish-branded Telegram channels. The network allowed political messages to arrive through trusted religious relationships rather than party campaigners. (17)

Digital operators supplied apparent popularity and repetition. In 2024, Meta removed (18) a coordinated network that originated mainly in Transnistria and targeted Russian-speaking Moldovans through fictitious news brands such as Moldovan Mole, Insider Moldova and Gagauzia on Air. The same brands operated across Facebook, Instagram, Telegram, Odnoklassniki and TikTok. Fake accounts pushed users toward Telegram, while operators offered money or small rewards for follows, online engagement and graffiti displaying campaign names.

The operation nevertheless failed at the ballot box. PAS, the pro-European party founded by Sandu and led in parliament by her political allies, won an absolute majority. (19) The Patriotic Electoral Bloc led by former president Igor Dodon's Party of Socialists finished second. Diaspora voters were decisive: nearly 280,000 ballots were cast abroad, and about 78 percent supported PAS, compared with about 44 percent of voters inside the country. (20)

The failure had practical causes. Moldova's election commission and security institutions prepared earlier than in 2024. International support strengthened cyber defense and strategic communication. Police disrupted organizers and payment networks. Independent media and civil society exposed patterns quickly. Large diaspora turnout offset constituencies more exposed to the operation. International observers still recorded (21) serious foreign interference, illegal finance, cyberattacks and widespread disinformation, but the combined pressure did not overturn the result.

Before and after the September 2025 vote, Moldova and its partners attacked the most visible infrastructure. The Victory bloc and successor formations were restricted or sanctioned. (22) Heart of Moldova and Greater Moldova were excluded from the 2025 contest following findings concerning illegal finance and vote buying. Western measures targeted further coordinators, (23), (24) the A7 corporate and cryptocurrency system and its A7A5 stablecoin, which had provided an alternative route for Russian-linked transfers. (25)

These actions explain both the defeat and the transformation that followed. A branded party leaves a registration file. A bank transfer leaves a transaction. A cultural center has a legal address. A fear about statehood, a parish relationship or a copied voter list is harder to close.

The 2026 model therefore places the least replaceable assets at the center and pushes the most visible Russian structures into the background.

Moscow Shortens the Chain of Command

The political reorganization began inside the Kremlin. Dmitry Kozak had long overseen relations with Moldova and other post-Soviet states from Russia's Presidential Administration. He was also the author of the 2003 Kozak Memorandum, a failed settlement plan that would have federalized Moldova and preserved extensive Russian leverage over the country. Kozak left office on 18 September 2025, ten days before the Moldovan parliamentary election. (26) His departure was followed by a new Directorate for Strategic Partnership and Cooperation. (27) The unit is headed by Vadim Titov and operates under Sergei Kiriyenko, the First Deputy Chief of Staff of Russia's Presidential Administration. Kiriyenko is the Kremlin official associated with domestic political management and the administration of occupied Ukrainian territories. Moving Moldova into his chain of command brings influence strategy, political technology and the choice of local partners closer to the center of presidential control.

Moldova's 2025 elections were a test both for the Kremlin's evolving system of political interference abroad and for the individual operators involved. Some later moved into Titov's new directorate, while others assumed different roles. One example is Igor Chaika, the son of former Russian Prosecutor General Yury Chaika, a businessman and former deputy head of Rossotrudnichestvo, who became head of the agency in April 2026. Having taken part in the Moldova campaign under Sergei Kiriyenko's direction, he is effectively Kiriyenko's protégé within the agency, which formally falls under the Russian Foreign Ministry.

According to information reviewed by EK Stratcom, Kiriyenko personally supervised the Moldova campaign through several parallel contractors. One was Igor Chaika, then a senior Rossotrudnichestvo official with business links to the family of former president Igor Dodon. The other was Vladimir Tabak, head of ANO Dialog, a Russia-based organization involved in communications projects, including propaganda and disinformation campaigns, and has long operated inside Kiriyenko's domestic political system. Chaika's line concentrated on political alliances, organizations and finance. Tabak's line concentrated on digital production and distribution.

Chaika's appointment mattered in Moldova because the agency's local center was about to close. The Russian House in Chișinău was the public venue through which Rossotrudnichestvo ran cultural, educational and compatriot programs. Moldova ordered its closure, and the center ceased operating on 4 July 2026.

The Russian Embassy then announced that some functions would move to its cultural department. (28)

According to information reviewed by EK Stratcom, the transfer goes beyond public events. Program administration and financing are moving toward the Embassy, with Ambassador Oleg Ozerov as the central coordinator. Moldova approved Ozerov's appointment but has withheld the final presentation of credentials while repeatedly summoning him over Russian actions, including the May 2026 decision to simplify Russian citizenship for Transnistrian residents.

The shift gives the same programs a smaller public footprint and greater diplomatic protection.

Alongside Titov's new directorate and Chaika's appointment to lead Rossotrudnichestvo, a more permanent figure merits particular attention: Konstantin Zatulin. A State Duma deputy and first deputy chair of the chamber's committee on relations with former Soviet states and Russian communities abroad, Zatulin has pursued this work, including the Moldova portfolio, independently of individual political campaigns. Through the Institute of CIS Countries, he links policy toward Russian-speaking communities with a network of commemorative, language, and compatriot organizations that maintain relationships between elections. Their value lies in continuity: veterans' events, historical-memory campaigns, and Russian-language associations can preserve organizers and audiences even when a political party is sanctioned or disappears.

The result is a clearer division of labor. Kiriyenko's chain selects political strategy and compares potential partners. Rossotrudnichestvo and the Embassy preserve cultural, educational and compatriot access. Zatulin's networks maintain historical-memory and Russian-community organizations. According to information reviewed by EK Stratcom, Ozerov connects these Moscow structures to political actors and operational intermediaries inside Moldova.

The Local Infrastructure That Survived

The Kremlin can design a campaign in Moscow, but it cannot make that campaign look Moldovan without local institutions. The most important surviving structures are not all parties. They are parishes, civic umbrellas, community organizations and databases created during earlier campaigns.

The parish network is the strongest of them. Reuters documented (29) all-expenses-paid pilgrimages for hundreds of Moldovan priests in 2024 and 2025, Promsvyazbank debit cards and the creation of almost 90 parish Telegram channels. The channels carried anti-Western and traditional-values content before the 2025 election. The Digital Forensic Research Lab later traced (30) related religious content across Facebook, YouTube, Telegram and TikTok and showed how it was connected to electoral mobilization.

The network combined four functions. First, it placed political claims inside a trusted local environment. Second, it collected information about clergy and believers. The EU's June 2026 sanctions listing states (31) that Anton Usov, an organizer associated with the dioceses of Soroca and Drochia, surveyed priests for political loyalty, linked financial support to compliance, required proof of parish activity and organized the systematic collection of personal data during church events, pilgrimages and programs. Third, the network created digital channels named after local parishes. Fourth, it tested methods for moving money through bank cards and couriers.

Priests returning from Moscow carried Promsvyazbank cards. Other routes passed through Yerevan, where travelers could carry cash amounts below the customs declaration threshold. Radio Moldova (32) and specialist investigations (33) documented the courier method. According to information reviewed by EK Stratcom, the payment and courier routes remain available in 2026 and can be activated selectively around electoral events. The new model does not require the campaign-wide volume of 2024. It requires smaller payments delivered through relationships that already exist.

The operation did not encompass the entire Church. The Soroca and Drochia structure associated with Usov is separate from the open political campaigning of Bishop Marchel in Bălți and Fălești. Bishop Ioan Moșneguțu said publicly that he had no knowledge of cards or payments in his diocese.

The relevant unit is therefore the penetrated parish or individual organizer, not every priest and not the Metropolis as a whole.

Outside the Church, Igor Tuleantsev provides a bridge between social organizations and political mobilization. His Public Council Za svobodnuyu Rodinu (For a Free Motherland), created in 2014, presents (34) itself as an umbrella for more than 100 public, ethnic-cultural, veterans' and youth groups. The number matters because a campaign launched through an umbrella can be presented as a civic initiative supported by many organizations rather than as the action of one party. (35)

Alexey Petrovich operates the parallel compatriot and historical-memory structure. He leads the Coordinating Council of Russian Compatriots, which groups 41 organizations, heads the National Committee Pobeda and represents the Russian Military Historical Society in Moldova. Those titles place him at the junction of Russian-speaking community work, Soviet victory commemoration and institutions based in Russia.

According to information reviewed by EK Stratcom, the Tuleantsev and Petrovich umbrellas share access, personnel and event infrastructure and serve as two public faces of the same broader network. Tuleantsev provides a general Moldovan civic identity. Petrovich provides the formal connection to Russian-speaking communities and historical-memory organizations.

Together they allow the same organizers to move between social, commemorative and political activity.

The third surviving asset is data. During the 2024 campaign, the Șor and Evrazia payment system did more than distribute money. It created a locality-by-locality register of people who had supplied identity details, accepted contact and responded to a political offer. TAITO added document copies, video selfies, contact details, regional assignment and a record of completed tasks. In June 2026, Moldova's Information and Security Service, known as SIS, warned (36) that Russian services were collecting Moldovan personal data from illicit databases, compromised servers and the Șor network and transferring it to criminal groups. Reporting (37) on the warning described a dataset of about 145,000 records containing names, addresses, telephone numbers, email addresses and identity documents.

According to information reviewed by EK Stratcom, the 2025 voter database was transferred rather than dissolved and is available for targeted campaigns. The approximately 130,000 payment recipients identified in 2024 (38) and the approximately 145,000 records reported in 2026 should not be treated as the same count. The first number describes people identified by police in the vote-buying scheme. The second describes records in a later dataset. Together they show how an electoral-finance operation can leave behind a reusable contact and targeting system.

The database turns mass propaganda into individual access. Calls presented as opinion polling have moved from ordinary questions into claims about a European invasion of Transnistria and coercive social policy after EU accession. (39) The same information can support persuasion, manipulative polling, intimidation, fraud or recruitment. A party headquarters can be closed. A copied database can be moved in minutes.

These structures explain how the operation survives between elections. The next question is who can convert them into votes and institutional pressure.

The Politicians Competing to Carry the Strategy

Moscow's potential partners in Moldova do not form one ideological camp. Some are openly pro-Russian. Some present themselves as pro-European. One is a Romanian unionist. Their value lies in their ability to reach distinct audiences while amplifying the same claim:

that the government has lost control of the country and that Moldovan statehood is under threat.

Igor Dodon is the legacy client. He served as Moldova's president from 2016 to 2020 and leads the Party of Socialists of the Republic of Moldova, or PSRM, the country's main established pro-Russian party. PSRM led the Patriotic Electoral Bloc that finished second in 2025. In March 2026, Dodon and Zinaida Greceanîi, a former prime minister, former parliamentary speaker and honorary PSRM chair, traveled (40) to Moscow to meet Pyotr Tolstoy, a deputy speaker of Russia's State Duma. Dodon later met (41) Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko in Minsk. According to information reviewed by EK Stratcom, Dodon saw Chaika's appointment at Rossotrudnichestvo as a chance to restore his access to Moscow. He planned to present the Socialists' tactics for the next electoral cycle, assure Russian interlocutors that he remained fully controllable and propose an internal party reform that would preserve his leadership. He intended to approach Chaika, seek a meeting with Kiriyenko, and ask Ozerov to arrange support within the Presidential Administration. According to the same data, Dodon regards Ozerov as the principal coordinator of Russian strategy in Moldova and as a direct interlocutor of Kiriyenko. An Embassy review of the 2025 defeat contributed to the decision to reorganize Russian political proxies around Eurosceptic and sovereignist projects rather than rely primarily on openly pro-Russian parties.

Dodon must also protect his party from internal competitors. Vlad Batrîncea is a PSRM member, former PSRM executive secretary and deputy speaker of Moldova's parliament. Olga Chebotar sat on the party's executive committee until June 2026 and previously served as a deputy head of the Commonwealth of Independent States' executive structures. According to EK Stratcom’s sources, Dodon identified Batrîncea and Chebotar as the center of the internal challenge to his leadership. He assessed that Chebotar's pregnancy would reduce her political activity during 2026, leaving Batrîncea to carry the contest. Dodon also balanced a possible Moscow visit against his wish to lead the Immortal Regiment march in Chișinău on 9 May and his reluctance to appear beside Șor at the Moscow parade. Bogdan Țîrdea, a Socialist member of parliament with extensive Russian contacts, was considered as an advance interlocutor.

This is why calling PSRM simply "the pro-Russian party" misses the point. It remains useful because it holds a stable electorate, parliamentary seats and local organizers. It is less useful as the sole vehicle because Dodon and the Șor brand carry sanctions, investigations, electoral defeat and a long public record of Russian alignment.

Moscow needs the party as a reserve while it looks for a cleaner route into the center of Moldovan politics.

Information reviewed by EK Stratcom indicates that preferred development project is the National Alternative Movement, known as MAN, led by Chișinău mayor Ion Ceban. Ceban is a former Socialist politician who has recast himself and his party as pro-European administrators. As mayor of the capital, he controls a large public platform, commands municipal experience and can reach voters who oppose PAS but will not vote for an openly pro-Russian formation. Romania barred (42) Ceban from entering Romania and the wider Schengen area in July 2025 on national-security grounds; Romanian officials later referred publicly to documented ties with Russian representatives. (43)

MAN entered the 2025 parliament through the Alternativa Bloc, a coalition that also included former prosecutor-general Alexandr Stoianoglo and Mark Tkaciuk's Civic Congress. Tkaciuk was once the chief domestic-policy adviser to Communist president Vladimir Voronin and has long experience in party strategy. In April 2026, Civic Congress left the Alternativa parliamentary faction and Tkaciuk continued as an unaffiliated deputy. (44) According to EK Stratcom’s information, Ceban's separation from the older coalition network associated with Kozak creates space for MAN to be assessed on its own. Moscow intends to keep PSRM available while testing whether a Europe-facing sovereignist project such as MAN can absorb anti-government demand without inheriting the full liabilities of the Șor and Dodon brands. Tkaciuk remains important because he can operate between parties. His unaffiliated position enables him to carry anti-government initiatives across parliamentary boundaries when no single formation wants formal ownership. He is less a mass-electoral figure than a coordinator able to connect actors who cannot appear in one bloc.

Vasile Costiuc provides a different route. He leads Democracy at Home, a party that entered parliament in 2025 from a Romanian nationalist and unionist position. A unionist seeks the unification of Moldova with Romania, which would end Moldova's existence as a separate state. Costiuc therefore cannot be presented to voters as a pro-Russian politician. His potential value is polarization: by keeping union on the agenda and attacking the government from the pro-Romanian side, he gives anti-union actors a visible threat around which to mobilize. Expert Forum identified (45) a coordinated TikTok amplification core of 17 accounts supporting Democracy at Home during the 2025 campaign, with almost 1,000 additional accounts following the same profiles. In the new parliament, Costiuc announced a referendum initiative on unification. On 8 February 2026, weeks after Sandu said she would personally vote for union in a hypothetical referendum, he withdrew the initiative. (46) According to EK Stratcom’s sources, the anti-unification campaign benefits from a credible unionist actor who keeps the threat visible, divides the pro-European electorate and allows sovereignist politicians to present themselves as defenders of the country. Costiuc's withdrawal of the referendum at the moment when union had received maximum public attention is consistent with that function.

These politicians are not interchangeable and do not need to enter a formal coalition.

The system works if each speaks to a different part of the electorate while moving the public debate toward the same conclusion. That conclusion is the organizing argument of the post-2025 campaign.

The Argument That Makes the System Look Moldovan

The post-2025 campaign is built around statehood because statehood is both a constitutional principle and a genuine public concern. Moldova became independent from the Soviet Union in 1991. It shares a language, history and citizenship ties with Romania, but it has its own Constitution, institutions and political identity. Supporters of unification with Romania, commonly called unionists, see union as national reunification. Opponents see it as the disappearance of Moldova.

Russia can exploit that disagreement without asking voters to support the Kremlin.

Article 142 of Moldova's Constitution (47) gives the argument a legal foundation. It states that the sovereign, independent and unitary character of the state, as well as its permanent neutrality, may be revised only by referendum and only with the support of a majority of all citizens registered to vote.

A political campaign organized around those principles can sound like constitutional defense even when it advances Russia's strategic interest in blocking deeper European and security integration.

The available electorate is much larger than the openly pro-Russian vote. The July 2026 IMAS survey found that 54 percent opposed union with Romania and 58 percent opposed joining NATO. On EU membership, 48 percent were ready to vote in favor and 34 percent against. (48) The political opening is clear: hostility to Europe remains a minority position, while opposition to union is a majority position. A campaign can therefore oppose the government's European course indirectly by claiming that European integration will end in Romanian annexation.

Polling itself has become part of the contest. An iData survey (49) in March 2026 placed support for union at about 42 percent. A June ATES survey (50) placed support at 38 percent and opposition at 48.1 percent. The July IMAS result placed support at 33 percent. These differences may reflect methodological variation and genuine shifts in public opinion. However, they should also be interpreted in the context of documented efforts to manipulate perceptions of electoral support. In June 2026, the EU sanctioned (51) polling coordinator Alina Juc for activities aimed at distorting public perceptions through manipulated polling.

The new campaign had genuine political statements to work with. On 12 January 2026, Sandu said (52) she would vote for unification in a hypothetical referendum while stressing that EU accession remained the realistic national course. Eight days later, Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov described (53) union as the destruction of Moldovan statehood. In June, deputy prime minister Eugen Osmochescu described (54) union as a possible "Plan B" if the EU path were blocked after 2028. Conditional and personal statements were then presented across Russian and proxy media as evidence of an immediate state project.

The laundering mechanism is as important as the message. In September 2025, the claim that Romanian forces were preparing an operation against Transnistria appeared (55) in the Polish weekly Myśl Polska, identified by EK Stratcom as a Kremlin FIMI tool, before it was amplified in Moldova and in Kremlin-aligned channels. (56) In June 2026, a Romanian parliamentary initiative concerning union, which the Romanian government opposed and parliament did not adopt, was converted by the Kremlin Pravda network into evidence that annexation was being prepared without Moldovan consent. (57) A foreign publication creates distance from Moscow. Moldovan voices then cite the foreign publication as independent confirmation.

The same method appeared in EK Stratcom's 2025 monitoring. According to information reviewed by EK Stratcom, a marginal Turkish website published a claim that Sandu intended to send 700 Moldovan volunteers to Ukraine. Russian community sites, regional outlets and eventually the state agency TASS repeated the story.

The original source did not need a large audience. Its function was to give the claim a non-Russian first address before the Russian ecosystem brought it back at scale.

Statehood also solves a legal and reputational problem for the network. The EU sanctions regime for Moldova covers actions that threaten the country's sovereignty, independence, democracy, rule of law, stability or security. (58), (59) Russian operators therefore benefit from placing legitimate constitutional language at the front while moving coordination, finance and sanctioned relationships out of public view. The visible opinion is shared by many ordinary Moldovans. The operational system behind its amplification is what gives the opinion strategic direction. According to information reviewed by EK Stratcom, this is why a credible unionist actor such as Costiuc can be useful to an anti-union campaign and why a nominally pro-European party such as MAN can be more valuable than another openly pro-Russian formation. One actor makes the threat visible. Another promises to defend the state. Russian and proxy media supply repetition and external validation. The participants can remain publicly opposed while their activity reinforces the same political frame.

The argument becomes most powerful when it attaches itself to a real dispute. Gagauzia provides the nearest and clearest test.

Gagauzia Turns the Argument Into an Institutional Conflict

Gagauzia is an autonomous territorial unit in southern Moldova. Most of its population is Gagauz, a Turkic-speaking and predominantly Orthodox community. A 1994 autonomy law gave the region its own elected governor, known as the bashkan, and a 35-seat legislature called the People's Assembly. Komrat is the regional capital. The autonomy was designed to keep the region inside Moldova after tensions during the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Those institutions entered 2026 in crisis. (60) The mandate of the People's Assembly expired in November 2025. Elections planned for March and June 2026 were canceled during a dispute over the composition and powers of the regional electoral authority. Evghenia Guțul, the elected bashkan and a former Kremlin-backed Șor Party candidate, was serving a seven-year prison sentence imposed in August 2025 for channelling undeclared Russian funds to the banned party. (61) The legal conflict then moved to Moldova's Constitutional Court. In July 2026, the Court struck down provisions (62) that had allowed the People's Assembly to approve the regional electoral authority and that required Gagauz participation in appointments to territorial police, intelligence and justice offices. (63) The People's Assembly had already chosen 15 November 2026 as the new election date. (64) Moldova's parliament began transferring the governing rules into the national Electoral Code while preserving the existing single-member constituency system for the regional vote. (65) The dispute is about who has the final authority to organize an election inside an autonomous region. Komrat argues that autonomy requires meaningful regional control. Chișinău argues that electoral administration and state appointments must comply with the national Constitution.

Every technical step now carries a political meaning: who appoints the commission, who registers candidates, who administers districts, who observes voting and who certifies the result.

EK Stratcom's July monitoring shows how that legal dispute was converted into a Kremlin-initiated threat narrative. On 20 July, Gagauz representatives described talks with Chișinău as constructive and confirmed the November election. Over the next ten days, the framing moved through a consistent sequence. Dialogue became "monologue". A procedural disagreement became a new legal confrontation. The commission was described as fully controlled by Chișinău. By the end of the sequence, PAS was portrayed as governing Gagauzia from outside and abolishing autonomy. According to information reviewed by EK Stratcom, the speed, direction and repetition of the change across Gagauz, national and parish channels reflect coordinated narrative steering. The objective is wider than winning seats in the People's Assembly. The campaign seeks to persuade local voters that national institutions are illegitimate, persuade European institutions that Moldova violates minority and autonomy guarantees, and draw Turkey into the dispute. Turkey matters because Gagauz identity is culturally and linguistically connected to the Turkic world. Ankara has invested in infrastructure and maintains influence in the region. Appeals and disinformation framed around minority rights and autonomous government are therefore directed simultaneously at Gagauz voters, Brussels and Ankara.

The November election will show whether the rebuilt Kremlin influence system in Moldova can turn online coordination into an institutional confrontation. The most useful outcome for the system is a disputed process rather than a normal change of representatives. A cancellation, mass challenge to candidate registration or contested certification would keep the question of legal authority open and allow every national intervention to be presented as an attack on autonomy.

Gagauzia is the short-term pressure point. Transnistria serves a different purpose. It provides protected territory, long-term leverage and a permanent complication for Moldova's entry into the EU.

Transnistria Provides Territory and Long-Term Leverage

Transnistria is a narrow separatist territory along Moldova's eastern border with Ukraine. It broke from Chișinău after a short war in 1992, is not recognized internationally as an independent state and remains supported by Russia. Russian troops are still present. The territory has its own security institutions, administration, media and Russian-language public sphere, but it is legally part of Moldova.

Its economy weakened sharply in 2025. Output contracted by about 18 percent, (66) industrial production fell by more than 30 percent and inflation approached 15 percent. (67) An economic state of emergency began on 18 December 2025. At the same time, about 71 percent of Transnistrian exports went to the EU. (68)

The contradiction is central: the territory's political and security system depends on Russia, while much of its legal trade depends on European markets.

Chișinău has used customs duties, tax harmonization and energy policy to bring the region more fully into Moldova's legal and fiscal system. In March 2026, it also presented Western partners with a non-paper outlining a possible framework for Transnistria's reintegration. The document reportedly envisages phased legal and economic integration, external financial support, the withdrawal of Russian forces, and a possible temporary international civilian presence during a transition. It is not an adopted settlement plan, but it marks the first attempt by the Moldovan government since 2003 (69), (70) to set out a comprehensive reintegration framework for discussion with its Western partners. For the Transnistrian administration, these measures threaten the old economic model.

For Moscow, they create a reason to increase political and legal counter-pressure.

According to EK Stratcom’s information, Transnistria is becoming the preferred host for functions that face stronger enforcement in government-controlled Moldova. Proposed relocation of cultural programs and the administration of active Telegram recruitment channels are early signs of that shift. The territory offers Russian-language infrastructure, protected local institutions and an established security environment while remaining outside most of Chișinău's direct regulatory reach.

Meta's 2024 investigation (71) provides an open-source example. The company traced a network of fictitious Moldovan news brands to individuals from Russia and Moldova operating primarily from Transnistria. The operators used fake accounts, artificial engagement and cross-platform channels to make the brands appear independent and popular.

The names identified by Meta, including Moldovan Mole, Insider Moldova and Gagauzia on Air, also appear in the wider channel ecosystem monitored by EK Stratcom.

Russia added another form of leverage in May 2026. President Vladimir Putin signed an order allowing adult permanent residents of Transnistria to apply for Russian citizenship without the usual residence, language, history and law requirements. (72)

This policy is commonly called passportization: Moscow distributes citizenship outside Russia and creates a population toward which it later claims legal and political responsibilities. (73)

The citizenship order coincided with a Russian law that expanded the domestic basis for deploying forces abroad to protect Russian citizens facing arrest, detention or prosecution. The law entered into force on 5 June 2026. (74) Moldova had also amended its own citizenship law, effective from 24 December 2025, allowing the president to withdraw citizenship from people who joined illegal armed formations, the forces of an unconstitutional entity or an aggressor state. (75)

About 220,000 Transnistrian residents (76) already held Russian citizenship before Putin's decree, and many residents also hold Moldovan, Ukrainian or Romanian documents. Further passportization complicates security screening, reintegration and the accession process. It also strengthens Moscow's claim to act as the protector of Russian citizens in Transnistria. Russia's ability to translate that claim into a major military intervention remains constrained by the absence of a land corridor or a reliable reinforcement route. The same constraints would also complicate any attempt to mobilize Russian passport holders from Transnistria or deploy them for service in the Russian armed forces. The immediate value of passportization is therefore political and legal leverage, rather than a new military capability.

Transnistria therefore performs three functions in the rebuilt system. It is a protected location for media and remote activity. It is a source of recurring crisis narratives about blockade, war and Romanian or NATO intervention. It is a legal and territorial problem that can be used to delay EU accession even when there is no immediate confrontation.

How the System Reaches People

The influence system does not rely on one platform. Telegram organizes. TikTok provides mass reach. Facebook supplies established local audiences. Fictitious news brands disguise origin. Foreign websites provide a first citation. Russian state and proxy media then return the claim to Moldova with the appearance of confirmation.

In July 2026, SIS director Alexandru Musteață said Russian propaganda activity had intensified on TikTok and was targeting trust in the armed forces, security institutions and the justice system. (77)

Telegram is the operational spine because it joins public broadcasting with private chats, bots and payment tools. TAITO used closed regional groups for recruitment and tasking. Bankgreenmanager linked users to financial channels. Parish accounts delivered political messages under religious names. Regional channels localized the same narratives to Gagauzia, Transnistria, Bălți or individual districts. National anti-PAS channels then gave the messages a countrywide audience.

TikTok performs a different function. It reaches voters who do not follow political channels and can hide political claims inside entertainment, lifestyle videos, memes and personal testimony. EK Stratcom's September 2025 monitoring identified more than 100 accounts directly engaged in disinformation over three days. The wider WatchDog.MD study (78) identified 910 accounts and pages across YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram and Threads, including 512 accounts using false identities, 329 other inauthentic accounts and 58 bots. In the three weeks before the election, monitoring (79) identified almost 10,000 TikTok videos from inauthentic networks that generated more than 93 million views.

The same content traveled across platforms. Anonymous TikTok accounts used artificial intelligence, deepfakes and paid promotion. X accounts posed as journalists and often published one video before going silent. YouTube channels distributed videos branded to resemble the BBC, Euronews, The Economist or Bellingcat. Instagram accounts used artificial personas to reach Russian-speaking youth and redirect them into Telegram.

The aim was not simply to make one false claim believable. It was to create the impression that the same claim had appeared independently in many places.

G7 monitoring (80) shows the scale and hierarchy of the external layer. Kremlin-backed operation Overload or Matryoshka impersonated news organizations and public figures. Operation Undercut and Storm-1516 produced staged and fabricated content. Portal Kombat republished material across at least 193 websites in several languages and used Moldova-specific portals in Romanian and Russian. G7 analysts assessed that generative AI was probably used to produce or rewrite large volumes of material and create the appearance of varied local news.

Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project documented (81) how two Moldovan citizens were recruited through Telegram, paid in cryptocurrency and sent to Ukraine, where they set fire to railway infrastructure and filmed the result for a propaganda channel that portrayed the act as local Ukrainian resistance.

The case demonstrates a complete remote chain: online contact, digital payment, travel, tasking, recording and information exploitation.

EK Stratcom's July 2026 monitoring of approximately 90 Moldova-focused Telegram channels found that the loudest content was about government failure and the economy. The most strategically important content concerned statehood, Gagauz autonomy, Transnistria and the risk of war. Overt praise of Russia appeared less frequently.

That difference is the clearest sign of reflagging: domestic grievances now carry the strategic work that openly pro-Russian slogans carried before the election.

The persistent core contained about 60 channels that posted repeatedly, had identifiable functions or reached significant audiences. The largest monitored node was Chișinău v teme with about 76,000. The Transnistrian channel Prednistrovec had about 67,000 subscribers. Moldovan Mole, Insider Moldova, Obzor Moldova and other brands operated as apparent news sources. Gagauz channels repeated region-specific claims. Russian state and proxy outlets supplied external validation.

Apparently neutral retransmitters increased reach without carrying an explicit political label in every post.

The network uses named Moldovan voices to bridge those layers. In June 2026, Russia's NSN news agency placed Tuleantsev and Socialist deputy Țîrdea in the same item. According to information reviewed by EK Stratcom, the pairing reflected a stable relationship through which material was commissioned and placed, not a coincidental editorial selection.

The appearance of two domestic speakers allowed a Russian outlet to present the message as Moldovan comment.

The information remains useful after a platform removes the original account. NewsGuard recorded (82) 39 false Moldova-related claims from Matryoshka over three months in 2025. DFRLab later found (83) Pravda material inside Common Crawl, a large web archive used by search and artificial-intelligence systems, and identified routes through which such material enters retrieval and model-training pipelines.

A fabricated story can therefore reappear through a search result or automated answer long after the campaign site has been blocked.

The diaspora remains the system's most important high-value target. Moldovans abroad supplied nearly 280,000 votes in 2025 and supported PAS by a much wider margin than voters at home. (84), (85) Operations that discourage overseas voting, create false claims about polling stations or describe diaspora ballots as foreign interference attack both a pro-European constituency and the legitimacy of the mechanism through which it votes.

The data layer makes all of this more precise. A channel can broadcast a general claim. A phone number, locality, identity record and history of responsiveness allow an organizer to decide who should receive a call, a payment offer, a protest invitation or a message tailored to a local dispute.

This is the connection between the mass operation of 2025 and the lower-visibility system of 2026.

The Rebuilt Model and What Comes Next

The system that emerged from the 2025 defeat is less visible and more resilient. The Kremlin shortened the chain of political control under Kiriyenko. Chaika moved from campaign contractor to head of Rossotrudnichestvo. The Russian Embassy began absorbing cultural functions. Șor's parties lost legal room, but their organizers, technologies, finance experience and data remained useful. Dodon sought to restore his position, while Moscow assessed MAN and other sovereignist actors. Parish and civic networks preserved local access. Transnistria offered protected territory. Digital networks continued to connect all of them.

The new model does not require these parts to admit that they belong to one operation. It requires them to become mutually useful. A statement by a Moldovan politician gives a Russian outlet content. A foreign publication gives a Russian claim distance from its origin. A parish channel gives the claim local trust. A database identifies whom to contact. A Gagauz dispute supplies the event around which the system can mobilize.

The most important indicators are therefore functional, not rhetorical. Analysts should watch for financial or organizational support reaching MAN or other sovereignist projects through the Embassy, Rossotrudnichestvo or civic intermediaries; renewed mobilization through parish channels in southern districts; reappearance of TAITO-linked organizers or the 2025 account network under new names; use of the 145,000-record dataset for regional polling, fraud or mobilization; simultaneous appeals on Gagauzia to European and Turkish audiences; transfer of Russian House scholarships and grants into Embassy-administered structures; and increased hosting of recruiting, payment or media functions in Transnistria.

Russia does not need to create a pro-Russian Moldova. It needs a Moldova whose EU accession is stalled by weak institutions and rule-of-law failures, whose security remains vulnerable, whose citizens distrust the state, whose southern autonomy remains trapped in a dispute over legal authority, and whose population can be selectively targeted and mobilized whenever a crisis arises.

The 2025 operation tried to achieve that result in one election. The 2026 system is designed to build it one conflict at a time.

Appendix A. Narrative Monitoring, July 2026

The loudest narratives and the most strategically important narratives were not the same. Government and economic failure generated volume. Statehood, Gagauzia, Transnistria and war supplied direction. Overtly pro-Russian and civilizational material ranked lower. This is the central rhetorical change after 2025: Russian objectives are increasingly carried through domestic law, rights and grievance.

Appendix B. Persistent Channel Core by Function

The table reports approximately 60 persistent nodes within the broader monitored universe of approximately 90 channels. Categories describe the principal function of a channel and may overlap at the content level.

How EK Strategies selects material, verifies sources and phrases attribution: Read our Research Methodology.