Diplomats identified
Tensions between Moldova and Moscow increase
Updated on March 31, 2025 – 6:41 p.m.Reading time: 2 min.
Before the parliamentary elections in autumn, Moldau identified three Russian diplomats. They are said to have helped a pro-Russian activist to flee.
The tensions between Russia and the Republic of Moldova are increasing. The Moldovian Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced on Monday that three employees of the Russian embassy in Chișinău had been declared unwanted people. You would have to leave the country, “based on clear evidence of activities that contradict your diplomatic status”. The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs then announced countermeasures.
Moldau also accused Russia of organizing the escape of a sought-after pro-Russian MP into theetomy region of Transnistria. “An interference of the Russian Federation in the judicial system of the Republic of Moldova is unacceptable. Imagine that the Republic of Moldova would interfere in the judiciary of the Russian Federation,” said President Maia Sandu to the broadcaster Radio Moldova. The Russian ambassador in Moldova, Oleg Ozerov, rejected the allegation of interference as unfounded and not occupied.
MP Alexander Nesterovschi had been sentenced to a prison for illegal political financing. The Moldovian secret service published a video that Nesternovschii is supposed to show on March 18 when entering the Russian embassy in Chișinău, a day before a court condemned him to twelve years in prison. Alexandru Musteata, director of the Moldovian security and secret service, said that this was “part of the mechanism of hybrid aggression against the Republic of Moldova”.
Nesternovschi was found to be guilty of illegally forwarding money to a pro-Russian party in local elections in 2023 and in the presidential election in 2024 and a nationwide referendum on Moldaus EU ambitions that are connected to the fleeting businessman ILAN SHOR. Nesterovschi denied the allegations and called it politically motivated.
Parliamentary elections take place in Moldau in autumn, which will be a test for the popularity of the government’s pro-European course. The economically weak agricultural state between the EU member Romania and Ukraine counts less than three million inhabitants. Moldova is split between pro-European and pro-Russian forces. The eastern part of Transnistria divided the Soviet Union in the early 1990s in an internationally unknown step and turned to Russia. Russian soldiers are stationed in Transnistria.
Like Georgia and Ukraine, the Republic of Moldova belongs to those countries that submitted an EU access to EU as a result of the Russian war of attack on Ukraine in spring 2022. Just a few months later, the land was awarded the land of candidate, at the end of 2023 the EU cleared the way for the beginning of accession negotiations.
