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Moldova’s president has claimed Russia’s Wagner paramilitaries were behind a thwarted coup attempt that aimed to depose her as head of state as part of a campaign to destabilise the country.
In an interview with the Financial Times, Maia Sandu said Wagner’s late leader Yevgeny Prigozhin had planned the coup earlier this year and warned that Moscow is using various methods, including cash mules and bank cards issued in Dubai, to smuggle money into Moldova to bribe voters ahead of a string of elections.
“The information that we have is that it was a plan prepared by [Prigozhin’s] team,” Sandu said, adding that they wanted to encourage anti-government protests to turn “violent”. “The situation is really dramatic and we have to protect ourselves.”
European and US officials warned in February that Russia was planning to topple Sandu’s pro-western government and Moldova said in March that it had arrested a Wagner member and charged them with fomenting unrest. Prigozhin was killed in a plane crash in August, two months after leading an aborted mutiny in Russia.
Russia has sought to put pressure on Moldova, a former Soviet republic with strong ties to Moscow, since Sandu’s presidency began in 2020, as the Kremlin bristled over her strong pro-western views and desire to take the country into the EU.
The country became an official candidate country for the EU last year, and the bloc’s member states are set to decide whether to begin formal accession talks by the end of this year.
Russian interference has included using its previous role as the country’s sole gas provider as political leverage, hybrid attacks including the use of cyber tools, and threats involving the pro-Russian breakaway region of Transnistria.
Sandu said: “Russia is going to increase its pressure on Moldova. They tried energy and they failed. They tried to overthrow the government and they failed. And now they are trying massive interference in our elections, using a lot of money.”
The EU imposed sanctions on pro-Russian oligarch Ilan Șor in May for “destabilising, undermining or threatening the sovereignty and independence of the Republic of Moldova”.
Moldova banned his eponymous political party a month later.
Sandu has this week asked the EU to impose sanctions on companies connected to Șor that the government says he is using to continue funnelling money into the country.
“We can’t play chess with the Russians if they are wearing boxing gloves,” Sandu said, justifying the measures.
Moldova will hold local elections next month, with Sandu’s ruling party under pressure in some areas, including the capital Chișinău. Sandu said she had evidence Russia was specifically targeting the local elections to gain political momentum ahead of presidential elections next year and parliamentary polls in 2025.
Moldova’s intelligence services had detected at least €20mn in Russian finance entering the country for political purposes and the true figure was likely higher, Sandu said.
“The tools they use to bring the money to the country are very diverse. We have seen for a while that they were just sending Moldovans to Moscow by plane through Armenia. And these people would each bring [back] €10,000,” she said.
“We’ve seen recently that they were bringing cards, bank cards that were issued in Dubai . . . they just distribute thousands of cards . . . bank cards to people they wanted to bribe.”
Sandu also called on other European leaders meeting in the Spanish city of Granada this week to tighten their vigilance over “illegal funding from Russia” that was being moved through their jurisdictions into Moldova.
“It’s not just the direct, operation which involves Russia and Moldova,” she said. “Sometimes it goes through other [European] countries.”
This story has been amended to correct an initial error by President Sandu, to clarify that cash was being transported via Armenia, not Georgia.
