Elections Under Siege: Moldova’s Battle for Truth

As Moldova approaches parliamentary elections on September 28, a wave of increasingly brazen manipulation has hit the media space. Beyond the usual arsenal of propaganda, this campaign has unleashed deepfakes designed to inflame outrage, religious newspapers spreading anti-EU rhetoric and even pseudo-opinion polls that seed alarming falsehoods. Citizens receive phone calls asking questions that spiral into fabricated claims about an imminent EU invasion of Transnistria, the closure of churches, or even forced gender changes for children after European accession.

These manipulations are not random. They are carefully crafted to prey on fears and cultural sensitivities by blending falsehoods with trusted formats such as polling or religious discourse. In Moldova’s democracy, where external influence already runs deep, these tactics mark a dangerous escalation in the information war.

“The roots of disinformation in Moldova are varied, but several key factors stand out,” media researcher Victor Gotișan noted. “Deep social polarisation, lingering nostalgia for the Soviet past that sustains affinity with Russia, and regions where Russian is the lingua franca and separatist risks remain high, such as the Transnistrian region and Gagauzia. Together, these conditions create fertile ground for disinformation to spread.”

Sociologist Tatiana Cojocari, an expert at the WatchDog.MD NGO, analysed narratives circulating in the Transnistrian region and noted that among the most widespread was the claim that Moldova’s elections were not free or fair. Another suggested that Chisinau was hostile toward Russian speakers, and therefore against the population of Transnistria, where Russian speakers form the majority.

“The purpose of this narrative is to prepare the ground for contesting the legitimacy of election results and to lend credibility to Kremlin rhetoric,” Cojocari said. “These messages are also meant to stir up anger, driving greater voter mobilisation against pro-European parties and, ultimately, sparking street demonstrations if pro-European forces win the elections again.”

Parties funded by oligarchs based in Moscow had already stirred divisions within Moldovan society, she continued, amplifying the impact of disinformation campaigns.

“The most important goal is to distract attention from the illegal actions orchestrated by Moscow in the Republic of Moldova through local proxies,” Cojocari explained. “By employing these strategies, people are inoculated with the idea that there is no external interference in national elections, and the illegal schemes to fraud the election are operated not by Russia but by the government which is undertaking ‘non-democratic’ actions to win elections which they would otherwise lose.”

Disinformation also targets Moldovan citizens living abroad, a constituency significantly motivated to vote. In the 2024 presidential elections, more than 240,000 diaspora voters participated, amounting to some 14 per cent of the total electorate in the second round. This may help explain why propagandists and disinformation actors have now turned their attention to Moldovans living overseas.

"We must stay vigilant"

An interview given by President Maia Sandu caught Moscow’s attention after she accused the Kremlin of trying to influence the Moldovan diaspora ahead of the September 28 elections. Sandu told the Financial Times that Russia was using Russian Orthodox Church clergy and Matrioșka bot networks to spread propaganda through fake websites that mimic legitimate media outlets. In response, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova accused her of “Russophobia” and claimed that the Moldovan leader was “destroying democracy and human rights”.

Independent Media on the Frontline

Investigative reporter Natalia Zaharescu of Ziarul de Gardă recently went undercover to penetrate a secret group linked to the Moscow-coordinated Pobeda bloc, exposing a troll factory that operated hundreds of fake accounts on TikTok and Facebook flooding social media with Kremlin-backed, anti-European messages.

“There were over 500 people in the group I infiltrated, trained and directed from Moscow to spread propaganda,” Zaharescu told IWPR.

A follow-up investigation by her colleague Măriuța Nistor documented how the Kremlin’s digital army was divided into three battalions - north, south, and centre - and paid directly from Moscow in roubles or cryptocurrency.

“We learned that 12,000 activists and 10,000 sympathizers were contacted to join,” Zaharescu said. “The impact is intended to be massive, enough to tip the balance between the pro-European and anti-European vectors. We must stay vigilant, arm ourselves with critical thinking, and always check information against reliable sources.”

TikTok has acknowledged the challenge, announcing had dismantled four covert operations pushing political content at Moldovan audiences. Between July 1 and September 9, the platform blocked 250,000 spam accounts and 100,000 fake accounts - part of efforts, TikTok said on September 17, “to prevent disinformation and manipulation attempts” ahead of the elections.

Viorel Cernăuțeanu, head of the General Police Inspectorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, said that in the past fortnight the Cybercrime Investigation Centre had identified hundreds of accounts spreading thousands of disinformation videos on TikTok.

He also drew a link between propaganda and illicit financing, noting that a Chișinău media trust accused of spreading pro-Russian narratives was now under investigation for fraud.

“During the investigation, a money-laundering network was uncovered, with the financing scheme of this media trust organised through a construction company employing foreign workers which carried out fictitious transactions via a petroleum company,” Cernăuțeanu said. “These financial flows represent a continuous form of corruption serving electoral interests and, at the same time, a means of public manipulation.”

"Deepfakes deliver spectacular, alarmist statements about pensions, rising prices or state abuses."

Deepfakes have become another staple of Moldova’s election campaigns. Pro-European politicians are the usual targets, with fabricated statements on religion, the LGBT community, and the Church - sensitive themes deliberately chosen to sway specific voter groups.

“In this campaign, we noticed a very targeted use of deepfakes,” AI consultant Denis Zacon told IWPR. “Specifically, it’s not about creating one type of deepfake for the general public, but rather about using different manipulation techniques tailored to different events and target audiences. For a more mature audience, the focus is on credible political deepfakes: nostalgic imagery from the past, supposedly current visuals exaggerating a social problem, or videos of actions that never happened. For example, a photo of two political leaders can be animated by AI to make it look like they’re fighting. For older people, deepfake avatars are used with familiar faces or voices delivering spectacular, alarmist statements layered over narratives about pensions, rising prices or state abuses.”

According to Zacon, all these videos are carefully optimised for the feeds of different audience segments.

“Most of them aim to discredit Moldova’s path toward EU integration while justifying Russia’s aggression against Ukraine for Moldovan viewers,” he concluded.

Then there are the misleading phone calls disguised as opinion polls, in which citizens contacted under the pretext of surveys find that questions shift towards alarming claims fueling fears about alliances with Ukraine or drastic social changes tied to European integration.

These calls are not meant to measure opinion but to manipulate it, exploiting the credibility of polling to spread panic, distort perceptions and sway voters. Phone calls, once neutral tools of research, are weaponised.

Fighting Back

Well aware of the high stakes, authorities have established bodies dedicated to fighting propaganda, such as the Centre for Strategic Communication and Countering Disinformation, established in July 2023.

The authorities are also targeting malicious content on social media. Cernăuțeanu said that while nearly 60 per cent of content and accounts reported by Moldovan government agencies through official channels were either removed or restricted for violating platform rules, action was often too slow.

“After submitting requests for their removal, we found that blocking or restricting these accounts happens with significant delay - TikTok’s average response time being 48 to 72 hours,” Cernăuțeanu said. “We consider this reaction belated, because disinformation spreads very quickly, gathering hundreds of thousands of views in just a few hours.”

Legislative changes include the 2022 amendment of Moldova’s Audiovisual Media Services to introduce provisions against disinformation, spurred by concerns over Russian influence following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Although refined twice for clarity, enforcement lagged: the first penalties came only in April 2024, when two Gagauzian public stations were fined.

“In July 2025, Parliament adopted a new package targeting video-sharing platforms (VSPs) to align with EU standards,” Cristina Durnea, a lawyer at the Independent Journalism Centre, told IWPR. “The law requires platforms with legal presence in Moldova to implement community rules, parental controls, age-verification and data-protection safeguards, and to restrict content linked to hate speech, disinformation, terrorism, or child exploitation. The Audiovisual Council’s powers were expanded, but the law applies only to platforms established in Moldova, leaving major global services largely outside its scope.”

Beyond legislation, independent media organisations are also playing a part in the fightback, not least because they themselves are also frequently targeted by cyberattacks, online harassment and well-orchestrated campaigns to discredit them.

StopFals is a media initiative launched by the Association of Independent Press (API) to counter disinformation and propaganda.

“We are constantly subjected to coordinated attacks, mostly on social media, from propagandist accounts seeking to sabotage articles that expose falsehoods,” its editor-in-chief Mihai Avasiloaie told IWPR. “Their tactic is to create the perception that we are serving hidden interests. Both StopFals and API are targeted in this way.

“At the same time, the very TV channels we expose strike back with smear campaigns. For instance, after we published an analysis of one such propagandist channel, it quickly aired a lengthy report to discredit us.”

Experts agree that a pro-active response was key, with media researcher Gotișan arguing that this should be driven by innovation and collaboration.

“Independent media in Moldova has started using social networks not only for promotion, but to reach new audiences,” he continued. “Collaboration with influencers and experimenting with innovative formats have proven effective in countering disinformation, especially among people who avoid traditional media. To succeed, outlets need clear goals [and] authentic engagement with their audiences. Above all, they must create content that unites society rather than divides it.”

Locations Moldova

Topics Disinformation, Elections, Democracy