Imminent changes will mean less interaction between officials and local residents, less money for small-town Russia, and accelerated depopulation.
A narrower-than-expected victory for pro-EU incumbent Maia Sandu chimes with Moldova’s electoral history and complex regional loyalties.
The Georgian Dream party is stoking hopes among ordinary Georgians about the return of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Yet without Moscow’s approval, it’s impossible to imagine substantive negotiations taking place.
As Moldovans prepare to go to the polls on Oct. 20, it looks like another round of the familiar geopolitical standoff between Russia and the West over the countries in Moscow’s former empire and sphere of influence.
Podcast host Alex Gabuev is joined by Maksim Samorukov, a fellow at Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, and by Paula Erizanu, a prominent writer and journalist from Chisinau who writes for Financial Times, The Guardian and The New York Times, to discuss the upcoming presidential election in Moldova and what leverage Moscow still has to interfere in Moldova’s path toward the EU.
The Russian regime increasingly resembles the gerontocracy that ran the late Soviet Union, with elderly officials replacing other elderly officials, and some starting to die on the job.
The issue of relations with Russia and the European Union is firmly back at the heart of electoral politics in Moldova.
