Moscow’s ultimate aim, Sandu argues, is to help bring its allies to power in Moldova, and then use Moldova to threaten Ukraine from the west and the EU from the east.
As Sandu reels off the list of active measures taken by Moscow and its proxies over the election, worth an estimated $200m – 1% of the country’s GDP – the scale and scope is startling.
But that could just be the tip of the vote-buying scheme: crypto payments and old-fashioned hard cash incentives were also used, with customs identifying a sudden wave of men travelling in from Moscow with hard cash totalling many millions in the run-up to the vote.
In a country where people have often become politicians to either grow rich or protect their wealth, Sandu lives in a regular apartment.
She’s unmarried, which has brought much misogyny from her rivals, who accuse her of not being “interested in what is happening in the country because she has no children here”; betraying “family values” and of being a “laughing stock, the sin and the national disgrace of Moldova”.
