Moldova’s ruling party wins crucial election billed as choice between EU and Moscow

By Catherine Nicholls, Kosta Gak, Christian Edwards, Helen Regan, CNN

(CNN) — Moldova’s ruling pro-European party has won a crucial parliamentary election against its pro-Russian rivals, a result that keeps Moldova’s bid for European Union membership alive amid persistent allegations of Russian interference.

Observers and party officials had called Sunday’s vote the most important election in Moldova’s post-independence history. The poll was widely viewed as a choice between greater integration with the EU or a return to Russia’s orbit.

With more than 99% of votes counted early Monday, the Party of Action and Solidarity (PAS) secured 50.05% of the vote, with the pro-Russian opposition Patriotic Bloc taking 24.3%, according to Moldova’s Central Electoral Commission. An official final tally is expected later on Monday.

To form a government, PAS — the party of President Maia Sandu — needs to retain a majority of more than 51 seats in Moldova’s 101-seat parliament chamber. CNN affiliate, Antena3 Romania, reported the party is likely to do so after redistribution, a process where votes cast for parties that don’t meet the threshold to enter parliament are redistributed to other parties.

Sandu said there was “a lot at stake” for Moldova, while casting her vote on Sunday in the capital Chisinau.

“Moldova will have the chance to continue to strengthen its democracy, to protect its space, and to continue its EU integration path,” she said.

Meanwhile, Igor Dodon, the head of the Patriotic Bloc coalition who was the Moldovan president before Sandu, on Sunday called for protests in front of parliament on Monday, Reuters news agency reported.

Sandu is targeting EU membership for Moldova within the next five years and warned of dangerous consequences if Russian influence prevailed in the country of 2.4 million. Sandwiched between Romania and Ukraine, in recent years Moldova has been a flashpoint on the periphery of Russia’s ongoing war.

The country has veered between pro-Western and pro-Russian courses since the end of the Cold War. Russia has a small contingent of troops in the breakaway Moldovan region of Transnistria.

But Moldova’s pro-Western camp has dominated since 2020, when Sandu – a Harvard-educated former World Bank official – won the presidential election by a landslide, promising to clean up the country’s judiciary and combat corruption.

Her party PAS has held a parliamentary majority since 2021. Its progress was hampered by the security and economic crisis resulting from Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, but the war drastically accelerated Moldova’s path toward EU membership and Sandu ended Moldova’s near-total reliance on Russian gas.

In 2023, Moldova was awarded EU candidate status.

Other serious crises remain for Moldovan voters, including rampant inflation, high gas prices, soaring poverty rates, and instability from Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Accusations of Russian interference

Ahead of Sunday’s election, Sandu accused Russia of attempting to sway the vote to install a government more pliant to Moscow through a vast disinformation campaign. Moldovan officials had warned that the Kremlin was spending “hundreds of millions of euros” in a ploy to buy votes.

Moldova, which won independence as the Soviet Union crumbled in 1991, was subject to a “tsunami” of Russian cash, cryptocurrency and disinformation, in a campaign that aimed to bolster pro-Russian opposition, Nicu Popescu, Moldova’s former foreign minister, told CNN last week.

Moscow has denied any interference.

On Sunday, Moldovan National Security Adviser Stanislav Secrieru said there had been a string of incidents on election day including cyberattacks targeting electoral systems, and government websites, false bomb threats against polling stations abroad and illegal transportation of voters to polling stations.

Moldova’s foreign ministry said that polling stations in Belgium, Italy, Romania, Spain and the US were targeted by bomb threats “as part of the Russian Federation’s assault on the electoral process in the Republic of Moldova.”

Moldovan Prime Minister Dorin Recean said that cyberattacks were launched on infrastructure related to the electoral process, including the Central Election Commission’s website and “several polling stations outside the country.”

“All attacks were detected and neutralized in real time, without affecting the electoral process,” he said in a post on social media.

Moldova’s sizeable diaspora was crucial in securing Sandu’s reelection in 2024, but analysts said that Russia campaigned to demotivate those more liberal voters this time.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

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