These are nervous and uncertain times in Moldova and Georgia.
In a referendum on October 20, Moldovans formally enshrined the pursuit of EU membership in their country’s constitution by the narrowest of margins: 50.4% against 49.6%, hardly the huge majority opinion polls had forecast. On the same day, pro-Western President Maia Sandu came first in a presidential election she had called early, but again by much less than expected. With only 42% of votes cast, she faces a run-off against pro-Russian candidate Alexandr Stoianoglo, who received 26%, on November 3.
All this despite the EU’s having offered the divided but strategic country of three million people a €1.8 billion multiyear, pre-accession aid package earlier this year.
Before the vote, Sandu, a former World Bank official, had warned of Russian interference in the form of direct bribes to voters and crude anti-EU propaganda on pro-Russian media; estimates of the amount spent run up to $100 million.
“We are facing an unprecedented attack on freedom and democracy,” said Sandu, charging that pro-Russian criminal groups led by Ilan Shor, an exiled Israeli-born pro-Russian oligarch, and others had been actively promoting “unprecedented fraud.”
Chronic, widespread poverty in Europe’s poorest country may also have contributed to the narrow vote. Efforts to break its dependence on Russian energy, much of it provided via the separatist pro-Russian region of Transnistria, has forced Moldova to buy from Romania, at much higher prices.
Georgia, meanwhile, was due to hold parliamentary elections on October 26, amid concerns whether the ruling Georgian Dream party, bankrolled by oligarch Bidzina Ivanishvilli, Georgia’s richest man, an avowedly pro-EU figure who nevertheless tilts towards Moscow, would accept defeat. The EU registered its unhappiness earlier this year by formally suspending Georgia’s candidacy for membership. Policymakers in Brussels, Washington DC, and Moscow will be watching events in the two ex-Soviet republics closely.
