Moldovans living in Russia line up to vote at a polling station in the country’s embassy building in Moscow, 3 November 2024. Photo: EPA-EFE / SERGEI ILNITSKY
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov has criticised Sunday’s runoff presidential election in Moldova, which saw pro-European incumbent Maia Sandu being re-elected for a second term, describing the vote as “neither democratic nor fair”, Russian independent news outlet Meduza reported on Tuesday.
Sandu, who heads the pro-European Party of Action and Solidarity, was named the winner by Moldova’s Central Election Commission on Monday, having taken 55.41% of the vote and convincingly beating her Kremlin-friendly opponent Alexandr Stoianoglo, who took 44.59%, into second place.
Saying that it was “impossible to consider the election clean” due to it being “full of manipulation”, Peskov claimed that “several hundred thousand” Moldovans living in Russia had been unable to vote at the polling station set up at the Moldovan Embassy in Moscow.
On Monday, Moldova’s pro-Russia Socialist Party announced that it would not recognise votes cast in the election from abroad and that, as a result, it considered Sandu to be an illegitimate president.
The Socialist Party’s own nominee, former prosecutor general Alexandr Stoianoglo, beat Sandu in domestic votes, winning 51% of the votes registered in Moldova itself. Meanwhile, in overseas polling stations, Sandu won some 82% of votes, giving her just over 55% of all votes cast in total.
Moldova’s pro-Russian Victory bloc, established by fugitive Moldovan oligarch Ilan Șor, also refused to recognise the results of the election in a post on its Telegram channel on Monday evening, adding that it would challenge them.
“The Russian and Western Diaspora voted unequally. In Russia, home to the largest diaspora, only two polling stations were open. But in European countries there were dozens, and many were empty,” Victory bloc said, adding that Sandu had been re-elected “thanks to fraud at foreign polling stations and massive violations.”
Victory even went so far as to claim that Sandu had lost each round of the presidential election, and announced that they would fight to “eliminate this injustice at the legislative level.”
During the election, the Moldovan government repeatedly warned its allies in the EU that Russia was seeking to interfere in voting in Russia on an unprecedented scale, with Moldova’s National Security Adviser Stanislav Secriera accusing Russia of “mass interference” in the presidential election.
