ORHEI, Moldova — Short of natural gas from Russia and electricity from Ukraine’s missile-bombed power grid, Moldova has been left unsettled by skyrocketing utility bills and frequent power outages, according to the mayor of one In a small city to the north, the inhabitants could barely contain their anger.
Orhei Mayor Pavel Verejanu said: “They stopped me in the street and asked, ‘When can we hold another protest?’, describing what he called public anger at pro-Western central government and its failure to secure a protest. deal with Russia for a stable supply of cheap energy.
But there is another reason people are eager to protest: They are paid to participate in the noisy weekly marches that have been held since September in the capital Chisinau, calling for the removal of the Moldovan president. Maia SanduThe former World Bank official pushed Europe’s poorest country out of Moscow’s orbit.
Paid protests against the president and her Westward leanings were organized by the mayor’s political party, an extremely pro-Russian force led by his predecessor, Ilan M. Shor, a Convicted fugitive and fugitive, is trying to turn into a government. crisis into a political crisis threatening the government.
Anger over high energy prices has simmered across Europe for months, giving Moscow what it sees as its best hope of eroding public support for Ukraine and pressuring the Western governments withdrew their condemnation of the Russian invasion.
Russia-friendly activists on the left and far right have helped mobilize protests against high energy prices in the Czech Republic, Germany and other European countries. But those protests are much less frequent and much less well-funded than the weekly and often daily flash mob protests in Moldova, a particularly vulnerable country. due to longstanding political, economic and linguistic divisions.
Russia has not only created public discontent in Moldova through its squeeze on energy supplies, but also, through local allies like Mr. Shor, also pushed this discontent into the streets, attempting to overthrow it. pro-Western government.
Moldova’s foreign minister, Nicu Popescu, said: “Obviously all these things are related. He added in an interview that the energy crisis is “very, very serious” and “it’s legitimate for a lot of people to feel unhappy”.
But he scorned Mr Shor’s role in organizing and funding the protests as “an attempt to manipulate and overcome the negative effects of the war in Ukraine.” The result, he said, was: An energy crisis orchestrated by Russia and exploited by groups “openly pro-Russian” to “destabilize the government.”
A small but strategically important country located between Romania – a member of NATO and the European Union – and Ukraine, Moldova has been detained since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 of which it is a member. part in one tense geopolitical battle between East and West.
Local politicians backed by Moscow or Washington and the European Union have traded power over a long series of unstable governments in Chisinau. Mr Shor’s party won just six of 101 parliamentary seats in last year’s election, while Ms Sandu’s party won a large majority against those seeking close ties with Moscow.
Russia’s February invasion of neighboring Ukraine has pushed this perennial struggle into a tumultuous new phase.
It sent Shockwave and, on at least two occasions, Missile fell on the territory of Moldova. The rockets, the second found on Monday, landed in northern Moldova near the border with Ukraine, further rattling a fragile country already grappling with inflation near 35 percent. Gasoline prices in Moldova have increased sevenfold and electricity prices quadrupled in the past 12 months, Sandu, the country’s president, told CNN on Saturday.
Although not a direct participant in the war, Moldova, whose Constitution is committed to neutrality, has felt the wrath of Russia through its drastic cuts in energy supplies.
“Russia’s goal is very clear,” said Andrei Spinu, deputy prime minister in charge of Moldova’s frantic efforts to connect alternative gas and electricity supplies. “They want to change our government and change our geopolitical choices towards Europe,” he said as he sat in a bleak office in central Chisinau lit only by winter light. thinly shining through the window.
All the lights in his office were turned off to save electricity. He uses the flashlight of his cell phone to navigate the dark corridors of the government building. Russian missile attacks on Ukraine’s power grid, which once provided Moldova with vital backup power, left the country without power late last month.
The wide boulevard outside his office is a frequent site of protests organized by the Shor Party. Its leader, Mr. Shor, directs them from his hideout in Israel. He sponsored the protests and spoke by video link to each gathering group chanting for Ms. Sandu’s removal.
Warning of a “harsh winter” to come without Russian gas, Mr. Shor recently used Facebook page called on supporters to “single out on the street” to protest on the street. “We must do everything we can to get rid of this incompetent government and hold early elections.”
He did not respond to interview requests through his spokesman.
In October, US imposes sanctions on Mr Shor, his Russian pop star wife and seven otherss for participating in Russia’s “persistent bad influence campaigns” in Moldova.
That same month, police conducted nighttime raids on 55 offices, vehicles and homes associated with him and his team. Investigators seized 20 black plastic shopping bags filled with local currency worth $89,000, which prosecutors say consumed a week of protests and other activities aimed at overthrowing the government. government.
Veronica Dragalin, Moldova’s anti-corruption prosecutor, said in an interview: “A lot of effort and money has been poured into destabilizing the situation in our country.
Many, including American officials, suspected that some of the Shor Party cash came from Russia, which would be illegal, but Mr. Shor denied it. He has also appealed the 2017 sentence and the seven-and-a-half year sentence for his role in the property theft. almost a billion dollars from Moldovan banksinsists he is the victim of a corrupt justice system.
Dragalin, a Moldovan-American who previously worked as a prosecutor in California, said proving illegal political funding is difficult because it rarely flows through legal channels, which can follow trackable. “It didn’t arrive in a large bag marked ‘cash’,” she said.
Paying people to protest is not illegal. But by amplifying real discontent, it creates the impression that the country is falling apart – a message that, according to analysts, has been gleefully promoted by Russian news agencies.
Mr Shor’s party has also frequently exaggerated the scale of the protests, such as claiming that 45,000 people showed up last week outside the prosecutor general’s office. The real number is several thousand.
The sight of a political party echoing in the Kremlin talking about war and organizing paid protests over a Russian-induced energy crisis illustrates one of Moscow’s favorite tactics for asserting its influence throughout the former Soviet Union: Attack a crisis and then, directly or through local proxies, deliver a solution that requires acceptance of Russian hegemony.
The pattern first took place three decades ago, when just a few months after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russian national secession in the Transnistria region of eastern Moldova took up arms against the government of the newly independent nation. Moscow vowed to quell the violence and send in troops, allowing Transnistria to function ever since as a quasi-state haven for Russian influence and black market trade.
This pattern repeated in 2014 in eastern Ukraine, where Russia staged an armed uprising against the central government in Kiev, and then offered to help curb the turmoil on condition Ukraine accepted it. terms that strengthen Moscow’s influence. After that defeat, Russian President Vladimir V. Putin ordered a full-scale invasion in February.
With Russian troops on the run in Ukraine, no one expected the Kremlin to send its weak military force to Moldova any time soon. A small Russian force remains in Transnistria, but most of the troops are poorly trained and poorly equipped local recruits. Ukraine closed its border with Transnistria at the start of the war, cutting off supply lines.
Military options were limited; instead, Moscow attacked Moldova with its energy weapons, supplying less than half of the natural gas specified in the contract.
Many supporters of Shor, the runaway millionaire, in Orhei, where he served as mayor for four years before fleeing to Israel in 2019, admit that he may be a fraud.
But it was only during his tenure as mayor, when he built sidewalks, installed lights and dramatically improved Orhei, that they saw him as a Robin Hood character whose wealth, regardless of source, will benefit ordinary people.
His other appeal is that, unlike the current government, he has close ties to Russia and could use them to end the energy crisis.
Indeed, shortly after Russian energy giant Gazprom began cutting gas supplies to Moldova in the fall, a move that threatened a long, cold winter to come, Mr. sent several lawmakers from its party to Moscow to find “solutions to provide the Republic of Moldova with natural gas this winter at an affordable price,” the party said in a statement.
Mr. Shor stated that Russia will soon start supplying cheap gas to the area around Orhei. That never happened, not least because supplying Orhei with Russian gas alone was technically and legally impossible.
However, thousands of protesters have gathered weekly since then to support his call for better relations with Russia.
Mr Shor recently admitted to paying protesters – after an independent Moldovan newspaper, Ziarul de Garda, published an investigation written by journalists posing as protesters and receiving money.
Natalia Zaharescu, one of the journalists, said in an interview that she boarded a bus provided by Mr. Shor’s group to travel from Orhei to Chisinau. She said a week later, she received a phone call from a party organizer and came to receive a payment of 400 lei, about 20 USD.
Verejanu, the mayor of Orhei, said no more than half of the protesters were paid, and only those who were too poor could buy food and drink during their trip to and from Chisinau.
At a Shor Party rally last week outside the prosecutor general’s office, protesters blocked the main avenue and denounced the president and government ministers as corrupt thieves blind to pain. economy of the people.
Maria Muntiu, 80, insists she was not paid to attend and that she went out because she wanted to express her anger at not being able to afford a heater.
Moldova needs a “real president like Putin,” she said, who will put the country’s interests ahead of the “American geopolitical game” and provide cheap energy. Sandu, she said, “is trying to silence us.”
