A short political history of Moldova

Moldova is a small state with large historical shadows. Her geography, between the Prut and Dniester rivers, placed her first at the hinge of the Ottoman, Russian and Habsburg worlds and then—across the twentieth century—between two totalitarian empires that pulled her people, languages and loyalties in different directions. Those structural pressures bred an enduring argument over identity: Is Moldova fundamentally Romanian in language and culture, or does she embody a distinct, post-Soviet polity with its own mixed Romanian-Russian-Ukrainian character? That unresolved argument helps explain both the survival of a separatist enclave on the left (east) bank of the Dniester and the persistence of sizeable pro-Russian voting blocs in national elections, including the parliamentary contest of 28 September 2025. 

The modern Moldovan story begins with Bessarabia, which Russia annexed from the Principality of Moldavia in 1812. In the chaos of 1917–18, a local assembly (Sfatul Țării) proclaimed the Moldavian Democratic Republic and then voted for union with Romania on 27 March 1918. Romanians celebrate that union to this day; critics dispute its procedure and legitimacy; either way, it bound Bessarabia to Bucharest throughout the inter-war era. This period was run on mystical, Romanian Orthodox fascist, ultra-nationalist lines by Corneliu Zelea Codreanu (pictured above), Head of the "Iron Guard", a paramilitary organisation, until his assassination in 1938 after being arrested by the (equally dictatorial) King, sentenced to hard labour in a salt mine, and allegedly trying to escape. A very Romanian coup.

In any event, the union was undone by the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. In June 1940 the USSR issued an ultimatum and occupied Bessarabia and northern Bukovina, creating the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic. One year later, as Hitler invaded the Soviet Union, Romania—now under Marshal Ion Antonescu’s dictatorship—joined the Axis and re-occupied Bessarabia, administering the zone east of the Dniester as the “Transnistria Governorate”. That wartime administration, allied to Nazi Germany and infused with domestic fascism, presided over mass murder and deportation of Jews and Roma; it remains a central trauma in regional memory and explains why references to “fascist Romania” still carry moral force in Moldovan public life. In 1944 the Red Army returned; Soviet Moldova took shape, and with it the heavy Russification (including a significant Ukrainian population) that left Russian a lingua franca and entrenched a Russian-speaking industrial belt on the left bank. 

Independence in 1991 did not settle identities. On the Dniester’s left bank, factory managers, security elites and a largely Russian- and Ukrainian-speaking population refused Chișinău’s early nation-building programme and language laws. A short war in 1992 froze the front; Moscow retained “peacekeepers” and an Operational Group of Russian Forces around ammunition dumps at Cobasna. That garrison—about 1,500 personnel, many locally recruited and now largely unrotatable because Ukraine will not permit Russian movement through her territory—has continued to anchor the de facto regime in Tiraspol, Transnistria's capital. The arrangement looks stable but is in fact precarious: since 2024, Russian logistics into Transnistria have been constricted, energy flows disrupted and the enclave’s finances strained. 

Transnistria’s politics reinforce the ambiguity. The region’s de facto president since 2016, Vadim Krasnoselsky, is a Russian-educated former interior minister whose ties span Transnistria, Russia and Ukraine; open-source reporting indicates he has held Ukrainian as well as Russian citizenship. That detail—an unrecognised “president” with Ukrainian paperwork relying on Russian soldiers—captures the idiosyncrasy of a sliver of territory that is neither properly Moldovan nor fully Russian, yet dependent upon both. 

West of the river, Moldova’s domestic politics have oscillated. The Action and Solidarity Party (PAS) under President Maia Sandu has pursued European Union accession, anti-corruption reform and a strategic uncoupling from Russian leverage. Pro-Russian currents have endured nonetheless: parties led by Igor Dodon and formations linked to the fugitive businessman Ilan Șor have promised cheaper energy, “traditional values” and renewed access to Russian labour markets. Even when the Șor party was banned in 2023 for anti-constitutional activity, its networks re-aggregated under new banners, especially in Gagauzia, the Turkic-speaking autonomous region in Moldova’s south which has often been a vehicle for Moscow-friendly politics. In August 2025, the Gagauz bashkan, Yevgenia Guțul—elected with Șor’s backing—was sentenced over undeclared Russian funding, a verdict her supporters denounced as political. 

Against that backdrop, the 28 September 2025 election produced a clear PAS victory—over 50 per cent of the vote and a parliamentary majority—yet still revealed a substantial pro-Russian vote for the Patriotic Bloc and allied forces, roughly a quarter of the electorate. Reports from international media and analysts emphasised both the scale of Russian interference—vote-buying schemes, cyberattacks, disinformation, and targeted influence via clergy—and the structural divides inside Moldova that make such interference effective. 

Why, then, did a significant proportion of citizens still vote for pro-Russian lists?

• Socio-economic exposure. Moldova remains one of Europe’s lower-income economies with high dependence on remittances; even after recent declines, transfers approach or exceed a tenth of GDP. Many families’ incomes still hinge on work in Russia or on Russian-linked trade; promises of cheaper gas and stable pensions resonate. 

• Energy and price shocks. After Ukraine ended Russian gas transit at the close of 2024, Transnistria and, indirectly, the rest of Moldova endured a wrenching energy adjustment. Moscow’s deliberate refusal to reroute supplies magnified hardship and created fertile terrain for narratives that “only Russia can keep you warm”. 

• Media, church and messaging infrastructure. Chișinău curtailed Russian television news and later blocked dozens of Kremlin-linked sites. Yet Reuters’ investigation this September detailed how Moscow cultivated Orthodox clergy with expenses-paid pilgrimages and cash cards to seed anti-EU messages on Telegram and in parishes—a potent amplifier in rural districts. 

• Regional geography of grievance. Transnistria cannot vote in Moldovan elections, but neighbouring districts and Gagauzia often do so with intensely pro-Russian sentiment; elites there retain ties to Șor-linked patronage chains and to Moscow. Court actions against those networks can backfire if framed as persecution. 

• Diaspora asymmetries. Large numbers of pro-European voters cast ballots in the EU. By contrast, the Kremlin protested that only two polling stations operated across Russia, constraining a diaspora that tends to support the pro-Moscow opposition; the complaint became a rallying cry that the government was “afraid of your vote”, energising opposition turnout elsewhere even as it depressed it in Russia. 

• Persistent hybrid pressure. Bomb threats against polling places abroad, cyberattacks on electoral systems, and disinformation about EU membership and “war mobilisation” sought to depress confidence and polarise society, blurring the line between authentic protest and engineered panic. 

The result therefore tells a double truth. First, a majority of Moldovans opted for Europe, handing PAS roughly 55 of 101 seats and rebuffing a Moscow-leaning Patriotic Bloc that finished near a quarter of the vote. Second, around one in four voters still prefer platforms promising accommodation with Russia, cheaper energy and conservative social guarantees. Those voters are not a historical anomaly; they are the living legacy of Soviet demography, inter-war borders and three decades of economic precarity. 

The separatist “sliver” on the Dniester is a daily reminder of that legacy. Its de facto authorities depend on Russian soldiers who cannot be easily reinforced; its economy long ran on subsidised gas and re-export to the EU; its residents hold Moldovan passports in large numbers and work in EU states. It is sustained, paradoxically, by the very Europeward flows that many of its leaders decry. As energy subsidies shrink and the Russian military’s logistics remain blocked by Ukraine, Tiraspol’s position grows more brittle—even if brittle things can endure for years. 

Romania’s role is equally paradoxical. The inter-war union and the Codreanu and Antonescu era’s crimes ensure that references to “fascist Romania” retain polemical utility in Moldovan debates. Yet contemporary Romania is a democratic EU and NATO state that shelters Moldovan workers, bankrolls development projects and—together with Brussels—now anchors Chișinău’s security and economic strategy. The past can neither be denied nor allowed to define the future; the lesson of Bessarabia is precisely that great-power bargains should not dictate small nations’ destinies. 

How, then, did Moldova become divided, and why did many still vote pro-Russian on 28 September 2025? Because history left her with layered identities; because Soviet-era social engineering seeded a Russian-speaking industrial crescent that never reconciled with nation-building from Chișinău; because Russia has worked assiduously to weaponise energy, media and religion; and because poverty makes any promise of stability seductive. The real story of the 2025 vote is not that these forces disappeared, but that—despite them—a majority endorsed a European path. That majority will only hold if Europe delivers tangible improvements in living standards, if Chișinău includes sceptical regions in a fair political bargain, and if the frozen conflict on the Dniester is slowly thawed not by force but by the attractions of prosperity and law.

The stakes are continental. Transnistria already sits athwart Ukraine’s south-west; any change there would ripple into Odesa and across NATO’s frontier in Romania. Russia understands this and will keep probing. Moldova’s answer in 2025 was to choose a direction; her challenge in 2026 and beyond is to make that choice pay off fast enough that the next tight election is won not in spite of hardship and fear, but because citizens can see, touch and spend the dividends of belonging to Europe.