By Bella Popescu
Introduction
Amid growing concerns over national integrity and European democratic resilience, the last cycle of elections in Eastern Europe showcased that Russia has intensified its information warfare efforts to sway public opinion and undermine democratic institutions. With key elections still on the horizon –with Romania set for a presidential re-run in May and Moldova holding parliamentary elections in July– it is crucial to understand Russia’s proxies and its successes at undermining democracy from within.
As such, the following three-part series examines the impact of Russia’s information warfare (IW) tactics on the 2024 elections in the Near Abroad and Eastern European Union (EU) Member States, focusing on Romania and Moldova. Through a comparative analysis, it argues that Russia has achieved partial short-term IW successes at a relatively low cost. The Kremlin’s tactics have destabilised and influenced elections by manipulating public opinion in three key ways: fostering distrust in state institutions, polarising societies against neoliberal democracies, and eroding confidence in the EU and NATO. Additionally, these efforts have relatively diminished support for aid to Ukraine, ultimately boosting the popularity of pro-Putin candidates and factions aligned with Kremlin interests.
Part I will situate Russia’s IW tactics within its post-Cold War foreign policy objectives. In particular, it will underline how disinformation campaigns are Russia’s most prominent form of IW involved in electoral interference abroad. This background will then provide the basis through which an analysis of the proxies and channels used to target the 2024 Eastern European elections will be conducted. Part I will include the case study of Moldova, whereas Part II will present that of Romania. Finally, by comparing the IW tactics in Romania and Moldova, Part III will assess both their similarities and differences, ultimately arguing that Russia’s IW has achieved partial success at a relatively low cost.
IW integral to Russian hybrid warfare (HW) and foreign policy tactics
In a quest to understand the changing nature of HW, its definition has evolved to resonate with the dynamics of the information age. NATO, for example, updated the definition of HW to include IW:
“Hybrid threats combine military and non-military as well as covert and overt means, cyber and information attacks, including disinformation, economic pressure, deployment of irregular armed groups, and use of regular forces. Hybrid methods are used to blur the lines between war and peace, attempting to sow doubt in the minds of target populations. They aim to destabilize and undermine societies.”
Following NATO’s HW definition, the North Atlantic security realm defines IW as:
“The strategic leveraging of information technologies and deceptive narratives to profoundly impact various domains, including communication, politics, society, and military operations … helping one develop strategies that allow achieving one’s political or material objectives without using kinetic forces.”
With this renewed differentiation between HW and IW, the Council of Europe has proceeded to differentiate IW tactics themselves, dividing information attacks into misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation (Figure 1). According to experts’ consensus within this realm, Russia’s preferred method of IW employed during elections seems to constitute disinformation campaigns. The argument usually highlights the low-cost nature of their plausible deniability, their insidious character at polarising society from within, and their capacity to permeate local discourse and appear indigenous to citizens’ concerns.
Figure 1: Types of information disorder categorised by harm level
Russia’s investment in information-technical capabilities became an official part of its military doctrine in 2010. However, the need to dominate both the informational domain and HW more generally are two integrated aspects of its post-Cold War expansionist ideology and foreign policy. According to McDermott, some Russians still attribute the fall of communism –despite the USSR’s alleged military domination– to Western propaganda and an orchestrated “information-psychological assault”. Under the leadership of President Vladimir Putin, this dormant obsession over great power status and the military’s hybrid domination was reaffirmed. In particular, the pro-Western colour revolutions and NATO’s eastward expansion formulated at the Bucharest Summit in 2008 reinforced Moscow’s view of Eastern Europe’s democratic aspirations as a direct affront to its waning superpower prestige. In response, the “Primakov Doctrine” –with its primary strategic focus on HW and IW tactics– has been developed to undermine imaginary adversaries and reassert Russian influence in the post-Soviet space and beyond.
In the Near Abroad, or former Soviet republics, the Kremlin has aimed to leverage shared elements of the post-Soviet experience to drive wedges between ethnic Russian and Russian-speaking populations and their host governments. Propaganda themes include a common feeling that the West in the late 1990s betrayed them by failing to deliver on promises of prosperity, the supremacy complex of having lost superpower status, the idea that Eurasian civilisation is founded on traditional conservative values, such as family and orthodoxy, and finally, a shared fear of violent revolutions, in which protests are portrayed as slippery slopes to bloody civil wars. Drawing on these shared aspects, the Kremlin can leverage Russian-identifying populations to amplify Russia’s message, pressure those populations’ host governments, and incite unrest in their host regions or countries.
In the far abroad, the Kremlin seeks to paralyse policy by sowing confusion, fear, and distrust in Western institutions. Andrew Wilson at the Aspen Institute divided Russia’s outward-facing propaganda into three tactics. The first is intended to “induce paralysis” through propaganda. The second seeks to target entities that already have entrenched “worldviews with anti-system” leanings and nudge them in useful directions. The third attempts to fashion “alternative realities” in which a particular media narrative is reinforced by a supporting cast of pro-Kremlin political parties and policies. Politically, it discredits democratic leaders and institutions through claims of fraud and corruption. Financially, it undermines confidence in markets by attacking capitalism and international financial institutions (e.g., the IMF and the World Bank). Finally, it spreads conspiracy theories to stoke fear of global crises, martial law, or nuclear war –all aimed at eroding trust in democracy. The common theme is the goal of creating confusion and undermining trust in Western democratic and military institutions.
In relation to Ukraine, Russia has actively disseminated misleading narratives designed to undermine the country’s legitimacy and reignite geopolitical tensions in CEE. These hostile strategic narratives seek to weaken Western military support for Ukraine, diminish confidence in Ukraine’s political and military leadership, and divert attention from the broader economic consequences of Russia’s full-scale invasion. A central theme in Russia’s propaganda is the assertion that global awareness of the “realities” of the conflict has increased, allegedly leading to a substantial decline in public support for Kyiv. This discourse exploits perceptions of “war fatigue” among Western populations, emphasising the purported weariness regarding the ongoing humanitarian and financial commitments to Ukraine, as well as the lack of “Ukrainian gratitude” toward its Eastern allies. The underlying objective is to diminish empathy and solidarity with Ukraine while fostering public opposition to further aid from Eastern European governments— expanding upon this narrative, the Russian government seems to suggest that a weakening European consensus on supporting Ukraine could leave individual nations susceptible to Russia’s “right” to defend itself.
Romanian and Moldovan Elections
Having contextualised Russia’s extensive efforts at achieving a dominating command of IW space in its Near and Far Abroad, the conduct of grey-scale activities during Moldova’s and Romania’s elections is but one of the Kremlin’s latest efforts at inciting democratic destabilisation. Through plausibly deniable operations –leveraging social media channels, trolls, bots, and political proxies, particularly anti-system candidates with Kremlin ties– Moscow seeks to manipulate public discourse and perception of pro-EU and NATO factions. The following section will assess Moldova’s electoral landscape, with Romania’s case being analysed in Part II of this series.
IW strategies in Moldova: channels
In the wake of an EU referendum and Presidential Elections, the EU Parliament condemned Russia for escalating malicious activities, interference, and hybrid operations to influence polls. MEPs highlighted the role played by a plethora of actors –including pro-Russian Moldovan oligarchs such as Ilan Shor and Russia’s state-funded RT network– in carrying out voter fraud schemes as well as cyber operations and IW across Telegram channels. Moreover, Moldovan security services stated that Russia has spent approximately €100 million to undermine the electoral process to influence Moldovan voters against closer ties with the EU. Particularly, fugitive oligarch Ilan Shor was identified as a key figure orchestrating anti-EU activities from Moscow. On social media, Shor openly offered payments to influence votes, defending it as a legitimate use of his wealth. Moreover, earlier in the election month, the national police chief, Viorel Cernăuțanu, accused the oligarch and Moscow of establishing a complex “mafia-style voter-buying scheme” involving $15 million being transferred to 130,000 Moldovans -almost 10% of normal voter turnout- to vote against the referendum and in favour of Russia-friendly candidates in what security forces called an “unprecedented, direct attack”. Most recently, Moldova’s Prime Minister Dorin Recean, declared that Russia’s total spending to righ Moldova’s election and its referendum could total to 220 millions.
Likewise, it is important to note that the Transnistrian population represents a particularly conducive medium through which Russia can feed its disinformation narratives. Herein, the Kremlin establishes state-sponsored media outlets reaching out across Eastern Moldova. Most Russian-language media in Transnistria is either directly connected to Russia’s news agencies or indirectly to Transnistrian, pro-Russian channels run by Tiraspol’s political elites or secessionist sympathisers, with its editorial content aligning with Moscow’s informational policy. The division along ethno-linguistic lines and the differing consumption of media and information further diverges perception of geopolitical realities between Chisinau and Tiraspol. For example, a May 2022 survey found that only 20% of Moldova’s Russian speakers viewed Russia’s actions in Ukraine as aggression, compared to 51% of Romanian speakers.
IW strategies in Moldova : proxies and narratives
Public-political discourse in Moldova sees political proxies pick up narratives disseminated by Russia’s disinformation channels, which make sure to reflect the tonality of local Moldovan production of geopolitical narratives. This strategy ensures that plausible deniability is advanced, whilst the discourse has more chances of clinging to domestic disenfranchisement. For example, the causal relationship between the narratives of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Figure 2) and pro-Kremlin Moldovan political actors (Figure 3 and 4), is apparent. Extracted from Cenusa’s paper, the first three tables present Russia’s official disinformation campaigns side by side with narratives employed by local political proxies traditionally aligned with the Kremlin’s interests –Igor Dodon (Figure 3) and Ilan Short (Figure 4). Figure 5 below, extracted from Cenusa’s analysis of Russian proxies in Moldova, compares all three discursive sources side by side.
Figure 2: Cenusa’s analysis of Russian MFA narratives in Moldova for the period of November 2023-2024
Figure 3: Narratives employed by Russian proxies in Moldova- Igor Dodon narratives in the period of November 2023-January 2024
Figure 4: Narratives employed by Russian proxies in Moldova- Ilan Shor narratives in the period of November 2023-January 2024
Figure 5: Side by side comparison of the narratives launched by the Russian Foreign Ministry and local political actors (proxies) in Moldova, November 2023-December 2024
These narratives, spread primarily via politicians’ Facebook accounts ahead of the Moldovan elections, exploit economic hardship and energy concerns while fuelling scepticism toward European integration and NATO. By leveraging fears over the cost of living and security, they aim to erode trust in Moldova’s institutions and pro-EU leadership (Maia Sandu and PAS). Distrust in Moldova’s political elite allows the Kremlin to exploit its influence over Transnistria and the country’s security concerns, fuelling fear and insecurity. This weakens in turn public support for Moldova’s backing of Ukraine and threatens to stall or even reverse its EU accession process.
To be continued: come back for Part II on [12/05/2025]
About the author
Bella Popescu graduated from the University of Cambridge with a degree in Multi-disciplinary Gender Studies, having previously completed a Bachelor of Arts in International Relations at King’s College London, War Studies Department. Her research specialisation combines the study of authoritarian regimes, democratic backsliding, and feminist-oriented public policy.
European Studies Review 