Sonja van den Ende
The obsessively Russophobic EU leadership is frantically distorting national elections to thwart any parties that are calling for more peaceful relations with Russia.
With hilarious irony, the European Union accuses Russia of interfering in elections and subverting democracy. This is while the obsessively Russophobic EU leadership is frantically distorting national elections to thwart any parties that are calling for more peaceful relations with Russia.
Recently, we have seen this attack on democracy by the EU in Moldava, Georgia, and Romania. The EU leadership is acting as a totalitarian, anti-Russia dictatorship. Disturbingly, anyone who questions the official narrative is smeared as an agent of Russian interference, or Moscow is directly condemned for infringing sovereignty.
Take Moldova, which borders Ukraine and whose president is an ardent supporter of the NATO proxy war against Russia. Moldova also has a breakaway region, Transnistria, which is aligned with Russia.
The President of Moldova, Maia Sandu, with the help of European Union forces in the background, officially won the 2024 elections. The incumbent president narrowly defeated Alexandr Stoianoglo, who was supported by the pro-Russian party of socialists.
Sandu's dubious victory has raised questions not only in Russia but also in other regions. Parallel to the first round of the elections, a referendum was held in Moldova on the future European integration of this post-Soviet republic.
The official story was that the citizens voted in favor of Moldova's European development in the referendum. The victory was achieved by a small margin of votes, mainly due to the support of Moldovan citizens living abroad (50.16 percent in favor of European integration and 49.8 percent against).
Despite the official results, the referendum failed, as even the BBC rightly noted.
The small margin of votes in favor combined with the inability of citizens of Transnistria, officially known as the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic and locally as Pridnestrovie, a landlocked breakaway state internationally recognized as part of Moldova, to participate in the elections, suggests that the population remains reluctant to participate in European integration.
The election and the referendum have made it clear that the Moldovan population is evenly divided between those who support European integration and those who support Russia. This polarization of society could lead to problems similar to those in Ukraine.
In such a scenario, it would be beneficial for Moldova, argues the pro-European government of Moldova and the European Union, to embrace a pan-European development, ensure that the results of the referendum are formally recognized and, after a certain period, hold new elections to legitimize the process.
Recently, Sandu attended Zelensky's birthday in Ukraine, where she was on a state visit. Not popular with much of her population and whose impoverished country is now facing a major energy disaster after Ukraine turned off the transit of Russian gas, Sandu tried to negotiate with Ukraine's illegal president. Vladimir Zelensky canceled elections last March and, therefore, has no legal mandate to be in office.
At a joint press conference, Zelensky said that Ukraine must be involved in talks on ending the war if such talks are to have any meaningful impact. He also said that he had spoken to his Moldovan counterpart about supplying that country with coal instead of gas.
Arguably, the European Union would prefer that the transition to the pro-European position in Moldova should take place with a less controversial leader than Sandu, one who might command greater societal unity.
On December 5, 2024, the erratic Sandu fired Victor Parlicov, the pro-EU minister of energy, just to save her political skin after Ukraine turned off the gas tap. There was nothing the dismissed minister could have done. After all, it was the Kiev regime that unilaterally cut off the transit of Russian gas to Moldova.
The pretext for his sacking was that Parlicov failed to replenish the gas reserves for Moldova before the start of the heating season. He previously distinguished himself by reluctance to negotiate with Russia's Gazprom. That would have been a horror for the EU.
By getting rid of Parlicov, President Sandu wants to aggrandize her pro-Western profile and turn more radically away from Russia.
Sandu's radical, anti-Russian politics are considered by many people within Moldova and also even by other EU members as being irresponsible and untenable.
One such radical idea is for Moldova to join Romania and thus quickly become a member of the European Union, thereby circumventing pro-Russian parties within Moldova.
These notions held by Sandu are not well received in the EU. The prospect of uniting Moldova and Romania into one state would contradict the West's condemnation of Russia for allegedly redrawing borders in Donbass and Crimea (albeit not factually equivalent).
Such a move by Moldova and Romania would also undermine the EU's criticism of U.S. President Trump's ambitions to acquire Greenland from Denmark. EU leaders have been rebuking Trump, saying that international borders are inviolable.
During her visit to the Netherlands in 2023, Sandu told King Willem-Alexander that her country is committed to being part of the European Union's purported peace and democracy project. They were hollow words to a king who doesn't have the power that his mother Queen Beatrix had.
Given the recent snap elections in European Union member states, this might be a better option for Moldova.
If Sandu wants to achieve Moldova's EU membership, she would be advised to take a more responsible attitude towards politics, loosen her grip on power and prioritize Moldova's interests and the development of genuine democracy.
However, the problem is that in a democracy, as the Europeans like to preach about, pro-Russian parties may win. This was the case in Georgia where the Georgian Dream party won.
It also most likely would have been the case in Moldova, except pro-EU forces intervened illegally to tip the balance for Sandu.
This is a "color revolution" of a different kind whereby the incumbent regime is bolstered and opposition parties are thwarted.
Another example of this was seen recently in Romania, where the pro-Russia candidate was sidelined. In the presidential election on 24 November 2024, Marcel Ciolacu, the incumbent Prime Minister and leader of the Social Democratic Party, was predicted to win easily, but it turned out differently. That would have been a nightmare scenario for the EU if Romania had gained a pro-Russia president with the largest NATO base in Europe. As it turned out, the surprise victor, a little-known figure whose polling suddenly surged, was elevated by EU interference.
The EU has degenerated into a Russophobic totalitarian bloc in which its own elections and those of its would-be members are controlled for anti-Russian objectives. Parties within EU countries (Germany, Hungary and Slovakia, for example) and neighboring ones that espouse a more sane policy of friendly relations with Russia are liable to be smeared, repressed, and censored. Perversely, if a popular groundswell calls for improved relations with Russia or voices criticism of the proxy war in Ukraine, then Moscow is condemned for alleged interference in democracy, leading to further pretexts for escalation of hostilities.
The EU has fallen under the sway of anti-Russian warmongers like Ursula von der Leyen and Kaja Kallas, the foreign affairs chief. The EU has lost its original stated purpose of fostering peaceful economic cooperation. It is time for a new European bloc of nations to emerge, one that engages creatively with Russia instead of seeking hatred, destruction, war, and repression of its own citizens - if they don't vote the right way.