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INTRODUCTION
The Republic of Moldova occupies a unique position in the geopolitical panorama of Eastern Europe. Situated between Romania and Ukraine, this small country finds itself at the intersection of competing influences, caught between its historical ties to the former Soviet Union and its proximity to Romania. Its contemporary challenges stem from this dual legacy, shaping its political, economic, and security dynamics. As global tensions intensify, in particular following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Moldova’s strategic significance has grown, making it an increasingly relevant concern for international discourse. On the other hand, the Moldavians’ sense of security is the lowest since the fall of the USSR, as they are at the front door of Russia.
Historically, in 1812, as a result of the Russo-Turkish Peace Treaty of Bucharest, the eastern part of Moldova, located between the Prut and Dniester rivers, known as Bessarabia, was annexed to the Russian Empire and remained a Russian governorate until 1918. In 1918, the supreme organ of state power in Bessarabia, the Council of the Land, decided to unite it with Romania, a state which lasted until 1940, when, as a result of the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact of 1939, it was annexed by the Soviet Union. As a territorial unit in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), it functioned till the fall of the Iron Curtain and, together with it, the Soviet Union. The Republic of Moldova became an independent, sovereign state on August 27, 1991.
Nowadays, Moldova’s geopolitical spectrum places it at the intersection of the European Union (EU) and the Russian sphere of influence. While it has long sought closer ties with the EU, exemplified with the officially granted candidate status by the EU on 22 June 2022, Moldova remains vulnerable to Russian political and economic pressures. The country’s energy dependence on Russia and the presence of Russian troops in Transnistria, officially known as the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic, a breakaway state internationally recognised as part of Moldova, further complicate its European aspirations, since the resolution of bilateral disputes is not named among the accession criteria; they are still considered important for the EU when it comes to regional stability and good governance as parts of the political criteria. After the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, Moldova’s security concerns have intensified. Hence, the country started seeking greater cooperation with Western partners, NATO, and the EU. These developments in the international sphere place Moldova at the centre of discussions on European security, border management, and regional stability as the question of EU enlargement emerges.
Understanding Moldova’s current situation is crucial not only for regional policymakers but also for all European citizens, as we are all affected, directly or indirectly, by geopolitical changes in the region. As Moldova navigates its path between East and West, the choices it makes and the future it chooses will have a significant impact not only on the EU’s future but also on the stability and prospects of the post-Soviet region to move on from the past.
As the winter of 2026 ends, the political and social transformations that have defined Moldova over the past year and a half demand both timely and rigorous analytical attention. The pivotal developments of the 2024-25 winter continue to resonate through the country’s current institutional landscape, shaping the accelerated EU integration. This paper aims to analyse and illustrate Moldova’s current and future geopolitical positioning, its domestic political dynamics, and its strategic aspirations for a deeper EU alignment through a current lens, arguing that understanding Chișinău’s call for Europe is not only a matter of bilateral relations but also an essential tool for understanding the current balance of power that greatly influences the current post-Soviet space. After the fall of the Soviet Union and regaining its independence, Moldova arrived at multiple crossroads between East and West, where its future role is based on two determining factors: the internal divisions and the consistent external pressure.
THE 2024 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS AND REFERENDUM – CRUCIAL DECISIONS IN THE FUTURE OF THE COUNTRY
The most significant crossroads gained international spotlight during the 2024 Presidential and Parliamentary elections, highlighting the growing political division between domestic and diaspora voters and questioning the powers and legitimacy of pro-EU advocates. Moldova’s 2024 presidential election debuted with the introduction of postal voting, available only for testing in selected countries such as the U.S., Canada, Iceland, Finland, Norway, and Sweden, with the hope that it can be expanded worldwide in the future. The Central Electoral Commission has registered 11 candidates, including current President Maia Sandu, former Prime Minister Ion Chicu, and other political and independent figures, but keeping her place strongly, from May 2024 until the day of the election, Maia Sandu was the favourite among the voting intention polls (G.R., 2024).
After the first round of presidential elections (alegeri.md, n.d.-a) on the 20th of October, Maia Sandu held a 17-percentage-point lead over Socialist candidate Alexandr Stoianoglo. A total of 1,561,726 voters participated in Sunday’s elections, representing 51.65% of eligible voters. On the other hand, the EU accession referendum passed with only a fragile majority, after 50.35% of voters said “Yes” to the constitutional amendment for Moldova’s EU accession, with the difference from the “No” option being only 11,400 votes (alegeri.md, n.d.-a). It could be easily stated that the positive outcome of the referendum was decided by the diaspora, which consisted of nearly 210,000 voters, where the vast majority (76.79%) voted “Yes”, while nearly a quarter (23.21%) voted “No” (alegeri.md, n.d.-a). As for the referendum, the Constitutional Court validated the referendum on October 31. The changes to the Constitution for which the Moldovan people voted were made automatically.
Two days before the second round of the elections, numerous raids were conducted in voter bribery cases, but against all odds, on the 3rd of November, Maia Sandu secured her second presidential term, winning 55.35% of the votes in a tight race against the socialist Stoianoglo, who received 44.67% (alegeri.md, n.d.-a). The deciders of this round were the same diaspora people as happened in the first round. Stoianoglo led among domestic voters, but Sandu won with an overwhelming victory in the diaspora, where 328,855, more than 80%, voted for her, especially in Romania, where the biggest Moldavian diaspora is. The Kremlin said that Maia Sandu cannot be President because she did not win the Moldovan vote in the November 3 elections. Additionally, Moscow accused Chișinău of denying voting rights to hundreds of thousands of Moldovans in Russia, even though the Republic of Moldova opened only 2 voting sections in Moscow (Ministerul Afacerilor Externe al Republicii Moldova (MAEIE), 2024a, 2024b) for both rounds, but these accusations were false. After several days of silence, the pro-Russian opposition candidate also acknowledged the victory of the reelected president. The barely won elections demonstrated the fragility of Moldovan political stability, giving legitimacy to the voices which clearly stated that the pro-European winners heavily relied on external voters since the internal consensus could not be met.
FOREIGN INFLUENCE IN THE REGION
The internal divisions and political fragility of Moldovan society were jeopardised by constant external pressure, which culminated in the interference in the electoral process. Still, the stakes of the elections were huge, and there was no single moment when the people of Moldova doubted the country’s future. Many accusations towards Russia of hybrid warfare solidified this fear. In June, in a joint statement issued by the United States Department of State, the U.S., U.K., and Canada accused Russia of plotting to influence the outcome of the October presidential elections (U.S. Department of State, 2024). Four days after the first round, Moldovan police chief Viorel Cernăuţeanu revealed that approximately $39 million entered the country for voter bribery in September and October (Nilsson-Julien, 2024). The bribery scheme reportedly began earlier in the year, with bank transfers starting in the spring. Authorities documented over 130,000 phone numbers linked to the operation, with the highest number of transfers occurring between October 14 and 17. The money was allegedly distributed by a criminal organisation.
In October 2024, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov argued that Moldovan authorities were restricting pro-Russian political participation and media coverage, stating that politicians were being prevented from advocating closer ties with Russia (“Kremlin Denies Meddling in Moldova’s Upcoming Election,” 2024). However, he rejected claims that Russia attempted to interfere in the electoral process. Later on, in December 2024, Moldova’s Intelligence and Security Service (SIS) reported external interference in the presidential elections and constitutional referendum, including illegal funding, propaganda, and disinformation (Servicul de Informații și Securitate, 2024). Moldovan authorities, with the help of international partners, countered cyberattacks, fake observers, and vote-buying attempts. The report also highlighted Russia’s use of mainly three online platforms, such as Telegram, TikTok, and YouTube, to spread pro-Kremlin narratives and war propaganda. Even though Moldova managed to overcome external interference in the electoral process, the energy sector is still a vulnerable point of the state.
BLACKMAILING WITH RUSSIAN GAS
The energy sector has become one of the main elements of state security. The most vulnerable countries to energy threats are those which do not have enough domestic resources to secure their nation. Even though Moldova secured its European path in the 2024 elections, the Russian influence still exists in the gas supply, making the country energetically dependent on its former oppressor. Russian gas has been supplied to Europe via pipelines running through Ukraine since the end of the Soviet Union in 1991, in a deal that has brought significant revenues to Moscow from gas exports and to Kyiv from transit fees. Ukraine announced in 2024 that it would not extend the transit agreement.
At the beginning of December 2024, Moldovan Prime Minister Dorin Recean announced (Lidia, 2024) plans to ask Parliament to declare a state of emergency in the energy sector and called for the resignation of three officials, including Energy Minister Victor Parlicov. Recean accused them of the alleged failure of officials to secure natural gas and electricity at the lowest possible prices and at the right time, leading to concerns over energy supply and affordability. In less than a week, the Moldovan government approved the new energy crisis management strategy and requested a 60-day state of emergency starting December 16 to prevent a humanitarian crisis, outlining 31 risk scenarios and response measures. The strategy, based on past crises and EU regulations, included emergency actions for fuel shortages, market failures, and infrastructure attacks. Moldova’s domestic electricity production covers only 23% of its needs, and the imports from Romania are insufficient. Authorities fear a halt in Russian gas deliveries via Ukraine after January 1, which could severely impact energy supplies, especially in Chişinău and Transnistria, which is supplied by the Russian company Gazprom. The Parliament rapidly approved the emergency situation one day later. The Russian authorities justified their decision on the same grounds as they did in the invasion of Ukraine: that Moldova discriminates against Russian speakers, and also stated that Moldova is using the gas crisis to get closer to Romania and NATO (Euronews, 2024).
The precaution measures came out to be justified, since the Russian Gazprom has announced (TVR Moldova, 2024) that as of January 1, 2025, at 08:00 Moscow time, it will completely halt natural gas supplies to the Republic of Moldova, citing “systematic non-payment of debts” by its daughter company, Moldovagaz, and “essential deviations from contractual provisions”. Romania announced that it is prepared for winter and ready to support Moldova amid its energy crisis, and in coordination with the EU, it developed a joint action plan to assist Moldova: cooperation between Romanian and Moldovan companies, technical solutions for electricity supply, and priority access to Romania’s surplus gas if needed.
The flow of Russian gas to Europe via Ukraine stopped on Wednesday, January 1st and has left Moldova’s breakaway region of Transnistria without heating and hot water, affecting its 450,000 mostly Russian-speaking residents (Soldatkin & Tanas, 2024). The local energy company Tirasteploenergo confirmed the outages, which started at 7:00 AM EET (UTC+2) local time, though essential facilities like hospitals were exempt. For a while, Moldova had other sources of gas supplies, so only residents of the Transnistrian region were directly affected, especially those living in blocks or flats. Although they had electricity, gas was delivered in small quantities, only for cooking.
Chișinău accused Moscow of exploiting its energy dependence to destabilise the country, which Russia denied. Luckily, back in December 2024 (Ministerul Energiei al Republicii Moldova, 2024), the energy company JSC Energocom of the Republic of Moldova announced that it will cover 100% of domestic electricity consumption in the whole first month of 2025, but it was still not enough security for the whole winter period. Leaders in Chișinău promised to build biomass power plants and to integrate the zone’s localities into Moldova’s energy system. Meanwhile, the Moldavian Energocom signed a contract with OMV Petrom Romania to buy electricity at a “lower” price compared to the original market price (Cojocaru, 2025). The Chișinău authorities tried to compensate for price fluctuations on international exchanges. They bought 30 MW a day until the end of January. Energocom added that “the price cannot be disclosed for the time being” because of commercial secrecy, but it would be “lower than the bids on the market”. Together with the help of the international community and the EU’s 30 million euro assistance (Mercier, 2025), Moldova succeeded in maintaining a decent state in the coldest weeks of the winter, but the solutions for the next year were still missing, making the country deeply reliant on both the EU and Romania, causing a constant ambiguity for the future of the country.
GEOPOLITICS IN MOTION: MOLDOVA’S POST-UKRAINE WAR TRANSFORMATION AND FUTURE PROSPECTS FROM A 2026 PERSPECTIVE
The constant external pressure, both in the electoral process and the energy sector, accentuated the fact that Moldova needs as much support from its neighbour, Romania, and the EU as possible, since the threat of pushing back the country to its 19th century did not disappear fully. But a full transition is never easy, but rather complex, and the main group impacted by the events are the citizens. The negative effects of the geopolitical shifts impacting the everyday life of society were best shown by their fragmentation in the 2024 elections, where the EU accession promises of better living standards failed to convince the vast majority. Since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine in 2022, Moldova has undergone a profound geopolitical shift in the past four years. The government led by President Maia Sandu and her Action and Solidarity Party (PAS) has strategically aligned the country with the European Union, gaining candidate status in 2022 and launching accession negotiations in 2023. This rapid westward orientation was reinforced by Moldova’s full compliance with EU sanctions on Russia. However, the decision to fully detach from Russian energy sources, particularly gas, significantly challenged the domestic market and national economy.
Before the neighbouring war, Moldova benefited from favourable energy arrangements with Russia, including subsidised gas supplied to both government-controlled regions and the separatist territory of Transnistria, secured by the Moldovan government. This status quo helped maintain the fragile balance of power within the country’s different regions. Following Ukraine’s decision to end Russian gas transit and Moldova’s switch to Western energy suppliers, the balance of energy supply collapsed. Since Moldova no longer required Transnistrian electricity generated from Russian gas, it imposed new trade and customs measures on the separatist region, weakening its economic autonomy and strengthening the country’s central authority over Transnistria.
Domestically, the Moldovan population has borne the cost of this strategic realignment. Rising gas prices and inflation have significantly reduced living standards. Even though the 2024 EU accession referendum ultimately succeeded, it showcased the vulnerability of Moldovan politics. Although the diaspora overwhelmingly supported the EU membership, the majority of domestic voters rejected it. The close result of the referendum underlined the growing disillusionment with the European promises long before the actual EU accession.
Looking back from a 2026 perspective, Moldova deepened its integration with the EU in the past two years. In September 2025, the country found itself at a strategic crossroads in the parliamentary elections. The results were in favour of the pro-EU accession seekers, with Maia Sandu’s party, the Partidul Acțiune și Solidaritate (PAS) Action and Solidarity Party, winning 50.20% of the votes, securing at the same time a solid majority to form a single-party-led government (alegeri.md, n.d.-b). Thus, there were no more obstacles standing in the way of EU accession. As for the energy question, at the beginning of May 2025, the state-owned Energocom company announced that it signed a 3-year-long contract with the Romanian integrated OMW Petrom oil company for the acquisition of natural gas (Energocom, 2025). The Moldova-EU relations got even deeper with the beginning of 2026, when Moldova joined the common EU roaming zone together with Ukraine. The ‘roaming like at home’ programme allows Moldavian citizens to call, send text messages, and use mobile data when travelling in the EU Zone for the same price as in their home country (General Secretariat of the Council of the EU, 2025).
CONCLUSION
The political and social transformations that have defined Moldova over the preceding seventeen months have proven neither temporary nor restrained. The pivotal developments of 2024-25 have left a permanent imprint on the country’s institutional landscape, strengthening Moldova’s trajectory towards new EU integration by making it an irreversible process, especially in the public eye, through the positive, but barely achieved referendum. This paper has sought to demonstrate that Moldova’s geopolitical positioning, domestic political dynamics, and strategic orientation toward deeper European alignment are not just minor concerns of bilateral diplomacy but rather a consequential lens through which the shifting balance of power across the post-Soviet space can be understood. Chișinău’s call for Europe, as this analysis has shown, is as much an indispensable need and outcome of regional history and geopolitical tensions as it is a sovereign aspiration.
Moldova’s determination to distance itself from Russian energy control has deeply reshaped its domestic politics and energy policy and, primarily, its regional relations by cultivating an even stronger connection with its neighbouring countries and the EU. However, Russia’s aspiration to maintain some kind of imperial influence over the post-Soviet states remains a legitimate threat towards these countries’ sovereignty and a challenge to fully cut the decades-long inferiority perception. The Russo-Ukrainian war, entering its fourth year, is also not giving rest to the proxy states. With a constant security threat, especially since Moldova is a neutral state not part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, there is no safety assurance for the country. Thus, to strengthen its defence capacity, it can only have one hope: Romania’s not just economic and social but also military support (Agerpres, 2026). Even Moldova’s President, Maia Sandu, herself stated at the beginning of 2026 that the country still needs additional outsider support in its Russian resistance. The President of Moldova even declared that she would vote in a potential referendum for the reunification with Romania if this would help the country gain full freedom from Eastern influence (Starcevic, 2026).
Although socioeconomic challenges and regional destabilisation risks remain present due to a low level of public support, Moldova’s EU accession path seems to have been stabilised and handled as a priority in the EU enlargement policy. The EU itself is also at a crossroads between institutional and federal defence reforms and the Member States’ sovereignty fears. In the process of the future enlargement, Europe also needs to draw its own conclusions from Moldova’s situation. One of them is that Russia cannot be viewed merely as a danger that ceases to exist after the implementation of some EU sanctions. Beyond all of this, as we saw in the energy security case of Moldova, it means the sanctioned country can also sanction other dependent countries in its power proximity. Thus, in the case of an EU enlargement, the future of the post-Soviet countries needs to be secured with a strong and united nation-building mechanism where every domestic disagreement from the past is solved. Obviously, this also means the case of Transnistria, the EU accession, and the future detachments from the Soviet times.
Perhaps the main lesson for Europe learned from Moldova is the stable unity expressed by its citizens, both abroad and present in the country, when it comes to an important decision for the country’s and nation’s future. The Moldavian people, even with a slight majority, demonstrated a consistent affirmation regarding the direction in which they wanted to see their country evolving. Not just in the recent presidential election and referendum, but also in the parliamentary election, citizens of Moldova choose at the crossroads between East and West. If the fragile internal situation is not resolved soon, it may complicate the EU accession procedure, especially if Moldova fails to resolve its security issues regarding the separatist regions desired by Russian control. At the same time, Moldova can be considered the testing country in the EU’s eastern enlargement. If Moldova were to have a successful EU accession, Ukraine would already have a wall breaker in front of it. But in the short term, deeper EU integration is likely, but in the long term, for becoming a new member state, the internal division and external pressures will be the decisive elements.
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The opinion expressed in the article represents the author’s private views, which are an integral part of their individual position.
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