Moldova backs joining EU by razor-thin margin as president condemns ‘assault’ on democracy

Moldovans have voted by the thinnest of margins in favor of joining the European Union, near-complete results showed Monday, as President Maia Sandu condemned an “unprecedented assault” by foreign actors on the country’s democracy.

With more than 99% of votes counted, 50.4% had voted “yes” in the pivotal referendum on whether to enshrine in the country’s constitution a path towards the EU, according to the Central Election Commission.

Sandu, who framed the vote as a choice for the former Soviet country between pursuing its nascent European future or remaining lodged within the Kremlin’s orbit, said the results meant Moldova had won its first difficult battle in its push to join the EU.

But the margin of victory – far slimmer than polls had predicted – will come as a blow to Sandu, who had been hoping for a clear endorsement of the pro-EU path she has charted during her first presidential term.

Despite winning more first-round votes than she did in 2020, Sandu also failed to secure enough votes to win outright in the country’s presidential election, held on the same day. A second round will be held on November 3.

In an uncharacteristically forceful statement issued late Sunday night, Sandu accused foreign groups of attempting to undermine Moldova’s democratic process and “using the most disgraceful means to keep our nation trapped in uncertainty and instability.”

Sandu said Moldovan authorities had “clear evidence that these criminal groups aimed to buy 300,000 votes – a fraud of unprecedented scale.”

CNN reported last week on the efforts of a Kremlin-linked network, spearheaded by the exiled Moldovan oligarch Ilan Shor, to buy votes in Moldova, aiming to sway the results of the EU referendum.

In a video posted to his Telegram account last month, Shor had said he would pay voters the equivalent of $28 for registering with his campaign and more if they voted against the referendum.

Partial results also put Sandu first in the presidential race with 42.3% of the vote, ahead of her closest challenger Alexandr Stoianoglo – a former prosecutor general running for the pro-Russian Party of Socialists – with 26.1%. Before Sunday’s vote, he had been polling at just over 10%.

The two will now face off in the second round. If other pro-Russian parties and voters throw their support behind Stoianoglo, the November 3 run-off could be extremely tight.

Speaking to CNN after what he described as a “difficult night,” Nicu Popescu – who was Sandu’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and European Integration until earlier this year – said Shor’s allies in Moscow will be pleased with their efforts to destabilize Moldova’s electoral process.

“They think the scheme has worked,” Popescu said.

For much of Sunday night, it appeared as though the “no” vote would prevail. But as the votes of Moldova’s large and mostly pro-European diaspora began to trickle in from abroad, the “yes” vote crept into the lead in the early hours of Monday morning.

“Everybody on the pro-European side is very grateful to the diaspora, because they saved democracy in the country,” Vadim Pistrinciuc, director of the Institute for Strategic Initiatives, a think-tank in Moldova, told CNN.

He said he was surprised by the “efficiency” of the Kremlin-linked vote-buying scheme, which he said “should be a wake-up call” to Moldova’s authorities.

Once the final results are in, Sandu said, “We will respond with firm decisions.”

Last week, US National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said, “Russia is working actively to undermine Moldova’s election and its European integration” and had dedicated “millions of dollars” to its campaign.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov, who before Sunday’s votes had rejected accusations that Moscow is interfering in Moldova’s political process, said the results “raise many questions,” since the overnight recovery of the “yes” vote is “mechanically difficult to explain.”

Despite the narrow margin of victory, Monday’s vote looks set to keep Moldova on its path toward eventual EU membership.

Sandwiched between Romania and Ukraine, Moldova has veered between pro-Western and pro-Russian courses since it emerged as an independent country from the ruins of the Soviet Union.

Its accelerated path toward Europe has been spurred by Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which shattered many Moldovans’ image of Russia as a benign big brother and created a determination in Brussels to prevent Moscow making further political inroads into formerly Communist states.

Since the start of Russia’s invasion, Moldova has weaned itself off its dependence on Russian gas and moved closer to Europe than at any point in its post-Soviet history. Buoyed by Sandu’s progress in combating corruption in the country, Moldova was granted EU candidate status in June 2022.

But Moscow still casts a long shadow in the country, most visibly in Transnistria, a sliver of territory which illegally split from Moldova during a brief war in the 1990s. Russia still has some 1,500 troops stationed in Transnistria, which is home to more than 220,000 Russian nationals.

The region even asked Moscow for “protection” in February this year, in the face of what it described as “increasing pressure from Moldova.” The government in Chisinau dismissed the move as “propaganda.”

In fact, Moldova has helped sustain the Transnistrian economy, by keeping gas flowing there since Moscow cut off supplies through Ukraine.

Still, Transnistria will prove an obstacle in potential EU accession talks, said Maksim Samorukov, a fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center.

“I don’t think Moldova can realistically join the EU without solving the Transnistria dispute first,” he told CNN.

This story has been updated with additional developments.