If a flood of videos on TikTok is to be believed, the people of Moldova are currently living through a reign of terror.

These short videos claim that the country is being governed by a "dictatorship" of its pro-European President, Maia Sandu, and the ruling liberal-conservative Action and Solidarity Party (PAS).

They also allege that this "puppet regime" has sold itself to the European Union, NATO and US billionaire George Soros with a view to destroying Moldova's agriculture, "introducing LGBTQ ideology" and leading the country into a war against the Russian Federation.

Former president's TikTok campaign

One of the people who posts such things on TikTok almost daily is former President Igor Dodon, a devoted follower of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Dodon is leader of the Party of Socialists of the Republic of Moldova (PSRM) and head of the Patriotic Electoral Bloc alliance. The logo of the alliance features a red-and-white star surrounding a heart with the Soviet hammer and sickle at its center.

Dodon describes himself as right-wing and committed to "traditional values," closing his videos with the Orthodox Christian salutation "God help us!"

This blend of hatred of Europe and the West, Soviet nostalgia, loyalty to the Kremlin, Orthodox Christian piety and right-wing populism appeals to a large part of Moldovan society, particularly in view of the precarious economic situation of many people in the country, especially pensioners.

Almost half of voters still undecided

This has been noticeable since late last year, when Maia Sandu was only narrowly re-elected president.

The country's goal of joining the European Union was also confirmed by a razor-thin majority of just a few thousand votes in a referendum held on the same day.

Now, however, things could very well go the other way.

On Sunday, Moldovans go to the polls to elect a new parliament. This will be the first scheduled general election since Moldova and Ukraine were granted candidate status by the EU in 2022.

Moldova at a crossroads

For months now, the poll has been seen as a pivotal election and one that could take the country either further along the road to the EU or back to Russia.

Opinion polls in the country are considered notoriously unreliable. The unpredictability of the vote is further compounded by the fact that almost half of all voters have still not made up their mind who they are going to vote for.

Even though Sandu's liberal-conservative, pro-European, anti-corruption civil rights party PAS is expected to remain the strongest party, it might lose the absolute majority it got in 2021.

Pro-Russian parties in the running

Two other electoral alliances that opinion polls indicate will be represented in the new parliament are both clearly pro-Russian.

These are the Patriotic Electoral Bloc and the political alliance known as Alternative, which was founded by Mayor of Chisinau, Ion Ceban.

Our Party (PN) is another party that could enter parliament. It was founded by businessman Renato Usatii, a political adventurer and populist who made his fortune in Russia and is hard to pin down politically.

Usatii could end up holding the balance of power and determining whether the country keeps its pro-European government or gets a pro-Russian one.

The Russian ambassador's cynical threat

All this explains why President Sandu has declared the election the most important poll since the country gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. She is warning of a potential "defeat for democracy."

She has said that if this comes to pass, "Russia will destabilize us and rip us out of Europe."

The pro-Russian camp is making little effort to deny this.

Dodon and his Patriotic Electoral Bloc are openly calling for an end to the country's pro-European course and a return to the Russian structures of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU).

Russia's ambassador to Moldova, Oleg Ozerov, recently made a cynical, thinly veiled threat to the country, saying that Russia is in favor of preserving Moldova's territorial integrity and neutrality and that Ukraine is an example of what happens when a country gives up its neutral status.

Humiliations for Russia

In economic terms, the Kremlin doesn't need Moldova, a small, largely agrarian country with a population of about 2.8 million.

Nevertheless, Russia's imperial mentality led it to start its first post-Soviet war in what is now the separatist region of Transnistria in eastern Moldova in 1992. About 1,500 Russian soldiers are currently stationed there, and it has a massive stockpile of weapons.

But Moldova's strategic value has increased since Russia invaded Ukraine in early 2022 because capturing this largely defenseless country would allow Russia to wage a war on two fronts against Ukraine.

Furthermore, it should not be underestimated that Russia's attitude toward Moldova has much to do with the humiliations it has experienced there — such as the fact that Maia Sandu has succeeded in liberating her country from the Russian embrace and set it on a path toward Europe.

Rampant vote-buying

In view of all this, it is no surprise that Russia is doing everything it can to sway the election to its advantage.

One way of doing so is the buying of votes via app. Last year, up to 300,000 voters registered for the app. At the time, the Moldovan government spoke of an "unprecedented hybrid attack" on the country.

The buying of votes is coordinated by a network run by the Moldovan-Israeli businessman Ilan Shor, who is commissioned by people in the Russian secret services and, ultimately, the Kremlin.

Shor was the mastermind behind what is known in Moldova as the "theft of the century," where a billion dollars was stolen from Moldova's banking system by means of complex lending structure between 2012 and 2014.

Sentenced to 15 years in prison in Moldova, Shor fled first to Israel in 2019 and later to Russia. Several parties, which he founded specially for this election, have been banned.

For months now, the Moldovan police have been warning citizens not to get mixed up in vote-buying. Unfortunately, however, they don't seem to have been very successful. Raids against people involved in electoral fraud and coordinating the vote-buying scheme and arrests are being made across the country almost every day.

Fake news and typical pro-Russian narratives

Another tactic is the flooding of social media — and in particular TikTok — with thousands of videos spreading fake news.

This is particularly effective because the majority of Moldovan citizens get their information from social media.

In addition to typical pro-Russian narratives, many current videos are claiming that Maia Sandu's "regime" is the epitome of corruption and that the ruling PAS is plunging hundreds of thousands of people into poverty.

The reality is that it was in fact Sandu and PAS, the party she founded, that were the first to launch a determined fight against corruption in Moldova since the country declared independence from the Soviet Union.

What's more, it is Russia's war in Ukraine that has plunged Moldova into a major economic crisis, above all as a result of the resulting drastic increase in energy prices and the cessation of Russian gas deliveries in early 2025.

But former President Igor Dodon, who is himself involved in several cases of suspected corruption, is not one to be moved by facts. In a reference to the political color of the ruling PAS, his main election slogan is "The yellow plague must go!"

This article was originally published in German.