The pro-European option of the Republic of Moldova, in balance

Faced with Russia’s hybrid war, the Republic of Moldova entered the electoral campaign for the presidential elections and for the EU accession referendum.

But the martial context around us is overwhelming.

I don’t think there is any man with a modicum of empathy for his fellow man who has not been shaken by the tragedy in Lvov, where a Russian rocket killed the members of a family – the mother and three daughters. Only the father, Iaroslav Basilevich, survived.

It is an unimaginable, unbearable tragedy. The funeral ceremony brought the entire city into the streets, people gathered to express their compassion and solidarity, aware that any of them could have been victims of the Russian attack. It’s Russian roulette.

Many video sequences from the funerals of the four martyred beings from the Basîlevici family circulated on social networks. What is shocking is the sheer cruelty and absurdity of this crime, if we judge it by the standards of the civilized world.

But Putin thinks differently, he wants to be the “terminator” of the world order based on law and respect for human life, he kills the civilian population in Ukraine, puts hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers in the “meat grinder” without flinching. He is the scoundrel who has nothing left to lose, he plays everything on one card: the card of war and destruction, of scaring the former Soviet republics and intimidating the West, in order to perpetuate his stay in power.

With every Ukrainian killed by the Russians, we, in Moldova, also throw away a page from Hemingway’s novel, “For whom the bell tolls?”.

We have been living in the vicinity of the war for about two and a half years, it is far enough so that we do not hear its explosions and do not see the lines drawn by shells in the sky, but every day on television and on the Internet we are assaulted by the images of the disaster, so that somewhere, on the periphery of our consciousness, lurks the anguish, the feeling of the temporary, the fear of the unknown. We know that Ukraine defends us, we can hope that the free world will not allow the war to extend close to our borders, although officially the Republic of Moldova does not have any security guarantees, it is a “neutral” state, located “in the sphere of vital interests of Russia” – Moscow’s rhetoric echoes Goebbels’ propaganda – and that is precisely why it is directly threatened by a Russian invasion.

If he’s not exploding bombs on our streets, he’s instead wreaking havoc with Russia’s hybrid war, detonating tons of lies, phobias and threats in an increasingly heated election fall.

Surveys conducted in July and August this year by the Institute for European Policies and Reforms (IPRE), in cooperation with CBS-AXA, reveal a number of over 66% of Moldovan citizens who would intend to participate in the referendum on the country’s accession to the EU and a the majority of them would vote “for”.

However, there is a risk of insufficient turnout at the polls. In order for the plebiscite to be validated, 1/3 of the citizens registered in the electoral lists must vote. Officially we have around 2.7 million voters, but how many of them will vote? It is not the pro-EU majority option that would raise doubts, but the insufficient number of participants in this exercise.

It would seem that all arguments are on the table. Europe offers us freedom, peace, well-being, it is true, we will have to work for it, but we will be helped, if only we want. From Russia comes death, blight, poverty. However, there are enough in Moldova who still have doubts about this.

The Russians use the war argument as a deterrent. They say: if you go to the EU, you will end up like the Ukrainians. The pro-EU option is a mortal danger to you, your chance is to stay in our lap and we will let you live. “Pax russa”, the older generations know it very well.

There are so many Eurosceptics in the countries of the European Union, so many people who bend their ears to the siren songs of the Kremlin, as evidenced by the recent elections in the eastern states of Germany, Thuringia and Saxony, where the extreme right, favorable to Russia, achieved record scores, so that why should we be surprised that the Moldovans, poorer, less informed, Russian-speaking, are much too permeable to Muscovite disinformation?

In recent months, in Chisinau, several heads of state and prime ministers have visited us to encourage the pro-European option, but these visits take place “there, in the high spheres of power”. And in the years of the “success story”, 2010-2014, when the Republic of Moldova was governed by the Alliance for European Integration, we witnessed a real pilgrimage to Chisinau by European dignitaries and the visit of American Vice President Joe Biden, but these descents, with geopolitical weight , did not prevent Bessarabia from falling into oligarchic captivity.

And today no one guarantees us that history cannot repeat itself. Especially with the war in Ukraine at our doorstep, and this factor, instead of strengthening confidence in the pro-European option, increases pessimism and fear.

Russia is pouring huge sums of money into the “gutters” of the Shor prison. This “dirty money” undermines the fairness of the election, turns it into a “special operation” of the Russians – not a military one, but an electoral one. The trips to Moscow of the priests employed by the Russian Patriarchate will end with instructions to influence the parishioners: back home, the pro-Russian clerics will throw anathemas at “sinful” Europe, the one that spoils our holy Orthodox traditions and perverts our faith.

Do past sufferings still matter?

In many localities in Moldova we have monuments dedicated to former political prisoners. There is also one at the train station in Florești, from where thousands of people were taken to Siberia, with cattle wagons, because they were thrifty, dignified and recalcitrant to the Soviet power.

But memory is not equally important for everyone. “What happened is not about us. We have our problems, we have to live well with everyone, both with the Russians and with the Europeans”, some say. Why is Putin not of the same opinion?

Books are published, debates are organized, films about Stalinist crimes are broadcast (although Public Television could do more in this regard!), congresses of Romanian historians are held in Chisinau, but all this, you get the impression, is for those who are ready clarified, the number of undecideds does not change: they are people less sensitive to the lessons of history, they do not ask themselves questions, they do not get used to reading, they prefer Russian entertainment.

The authorities, the citizens who care, should treat the risk of non-validation of the referendum with utmost seriousness: from ensuring the mobilization at the polls, where many young people are expected to vote for the first time and a significant presence of the diaspora, to securing the results of the poll in front of the cyber gangsters of the Kremlin.

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