The fugitive pro-Russian businessman Ilan Șor presumably has multiple skills in business, but there’s little sign that he understands irony.
“Moldova lost its independence a long time ago,” Ilan Șor lamented on April 21 at a conference of Moldovan opposition parties in Moscow, the former imperial capital. “Today we have foreign control.”
Șor was the messenger for what is visibly a Russian-backed effort to seize the political initiative from pro-Western forces led by President Maia Sandu. He has been absent from Moldova since 2019 and faces a 15-year jail sentence for involvement in a $1bn bank theft if he returns.
Moldova’s smaller pro-Russia parties, including Șor’s, announced the launch of a “Victory” election bloc to contest the upcoming presidential election and referendum on European Union (EU) accession scheduled for October 20.
Tired of the losing streaks and concerned for the future of the geriatric leadership of Russia’s longtime communist and socialist proxies in Moldova, the Kremlin has thrown immense resources behind a new Moldovan opposition centered on Șor. But with little to show for the tens of millions spent already and little sign that Șor can appeal to uncommitted voters, Russia risks cannibalizing its own vote from better-established Russophile opposition groups.
Russia had long thrown its weight behind communist leader Vladimir Voronin and socialist leader Igor Dodon, both Russian citizens and presidents from 2001-2009 and 2016-2020, respectively. But following bruising defeats to Sandu’s Party of Action and Solidarity (PAS) for the presidency in 2020 and for parliament in 2021, Russia began investing in the up-and-coming, 37-year-old Șor.
He is married to the Russian pop star Jasmine, and is an entertainment television fixture, earning the adoration of Russia’s public. He has also proven himself willing to disrupt the system in Moldova and has as a result been sanctioned by the US as a pro-Russian agent. In June 2022, he organized a series of long-lasting and chaotic protests against Sandu in Chisinau, which it later transpired was funded by Russia. That resulted in a court’s deregistration of Șor’s party, although that was later reversed.
The court case came just after a Șor ally won the governorship of Gagauzia, a Turkic autonomous region long dominated by pro-Russian parties that is now at the center of a Kremlin pay-for-votes scheme. In local elections a few months later, another shell party — Chance — was organized with the help of $55m in Russian funding funneled through Șor, Moldova’s security service said. Despite the deregistration of Șor’s party, the socialists and communists made significant gains.
His new grouping has allied with Chance and three others to form the so-called Victory coalition. Its platform rests heavily on well-worn tropes from Russian propaganda, above all that Moldova’s problems all stem from the lack of cheap gas that a pro-Russian leader could ensure. This appeals in a country where the cost-of-living crisis heads voter concerns.
In fact, the inflation surge of 2022 was a direct result of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Russian gas is indeed cheaper under pro-Russian rulers, but Russia’s ability to deploy access to energy as a form of political warfare has repeatedly undercut Moldovan sovereignty. One of Sandu’s major accomplishments has been to wean Moldova from Russian gas.
It’s not entirely clear Russia will get much out of its dalliance with Șor. A recent poll from IRI found Șor receiving only 4% of the vote in a hypothetical election, nearly the same as the difference between Dodon and Sandu. And more recent polls have shown Sandu up by 20 points on Dodon and Șor a nonfactor.
Victory’s platform, drawing almost exclusively from past campaigns by pro-Russian leaders, is unlikely to pull many voters away from Sandu. But with Moldovans ambivalent about Russia (almost three-quarters judge relations with the Kremlin to be poor, but 59% believe it to be Moldova’s most important political partner), it is early days to make a judgment.
October’s votes are absolutely critical for Russia. Its war against Ukraine was largely triggered by that country’s decision to seek EU membership, and the stakes are just as high this time.
The Kremlin fears that it has a diminishing chance of preventing a decisive move toward Western Europe and away from its Eurasianist vision for Moldova. Polls show an 8% lead for those likely to back the pro-EU vote, which may mean the Kremlin’s best chance to derail the process will come from winning control of the country’s presidency and parliament.
Ben Dubow is a Nonresident Fellow at CEPA and the founder of Omelas, a security firm that tracks authoritarian influence online.
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
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