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In the months immediately following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Moldova feared becoming the Kremlin’s next military target, especially as the Russian military pushed into the nearby Ukrainian city of Odessa. About 1,500 Russian soldiers are already stationed in Transnistria, a breakaway region of Moldova. As Russia withdrew into eastern Ukraine, the fear of invasion eased, only to be replaced by another, more treacherous fear: that the Kremlin can take control of Moldova from within.
The Russian method
Russia’s influence operations often focus less on trying to promote specific political parties and more on the undermine trust in the government or on pit different social groups against each other. Lithuanian fact-checkers from the Delfi melo detektorius group say they have witnessed attempts to spark outrage at an EU law approving the sale of insect meal for human consumption. In several countries, in particular in Poland, Russia has been accused to spread disinformation against lgbtqi communities. In Moldova, messages currently focus on high utility bill prices, which have increased since the start of the war in Ukraine.
“This is part of the Russian method – explains Valeriu Pașa, president of Watchdog.Md, a Moldovan think tank that monitors le disinformation campaigns and online influence –: If you can’t convince someone to endorse your version of events, you can at least try to confuse them so that they no longer trust anything or anyone.“. Shor, owner of a football club and a duty-free business among others, was part of the Moldovan political scene until 2015, when the police opened an investigation into suspected fraud in three banks, among one of which Shor was president. He later joined the Șor party and ran for mayor of the city of Orhei, winning the election with 62 percent of the vote. Two years later he was convicted of bank fraud and now lives in exile in Israel, where he was born.
Since then, according to documents obtained from the Washington PostȘor received advice from political strategists sent by the FSB, the Russian security service, who then wrote in a 2021 report that the party needed to position itself as a group capable of guaranteeing “concrete actions” and that it was supposed to be populist “In the true sense of the word“, offering to change “people’s lives for the better“. The United States has sanctioned Shor in october, pointing out that the support received from Russia was aimed at destabilizing Moldova. Șor did not respond to a request for comment from Wired UK.
The passivity of Facebook
As a sanctioned individual, Shor technically cannot advertise on Facebook. However, Watchdog.Md claims that he found a loophole for circumvent the restrictions of the Facebook advertising system and promote its political agenda. On February 3, he appeared in a video in which he criticized the government for increasing the cost of utility bills, which increased fivefold after Russia cut off gas supplies to Moldova. “Today the professions that the country needs most, such as doctors and teachers, are forced to take out loans to pay for utilities‘, says Shor, voicing his support for a petition calling for the government to cancel population bills in the winter.
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