Moldova, the latest target of Russian disinformation

Russian propaganda is flooding the internet with false claims about Moldova, an Eastern European country of 2.5 million, in an attempt to discredit the country's pro-European government ahead of upcoming parliamentary elections. Promoting false claims such as that President Maia Sandu embezzled $24 million in public funds and uses "psychotropic drugs," one such campaign alone is responsible for publishing 39 fake news stories in three months, compared to none in the same period last year, according to NewsGuard.

These narratives were spread by Matrioska , a Moscow influence operation that has already targeted the 2024 US presidential election, the February 2025 German election, and the war in Ukraine. The false claims about Moldova, detected by NewsGuard between mid-April and mid-July 2025, took the form of fake videos and articles that mimicked 23 reputable news outlets, including the BBC, The Economist, Fox News, Euronews, and even Vogue. In total, these posts garnered 2 million views on Telegram.

Many of these false news reports accused Sandu and her party of corruption. In an April 2025 video, for example, the BBC logo was used to claim that the investigative organization Bellingcat had discovered that the president had a secret lover, who, together with her, had embezzled €24 million in public funds. In reality, neither the BBC nor Bellingcat ever reported such stories, and NewsGuard found no evidence to support this claim.

The fake news circulated in Romanian, the country's main language, in Russian, which is spoken regularly by about 20% of the population , and in English.

The five main narratives collectively garnered nearly 1.5 million views on Telegram, the platform where many of the 39 false or unfounded claims emerged. The campaign was amplified by pro-Kremlin news sites and networks of social media accounts on platforms such as TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram. On TikTok alone, NewsGuard identified 50 accounts that in June circulated a fake story originating from the Matrioska campaign, garnering more than 50,000 views. The false claim, which alleged that the BBC reported that thousands of votes in the 2024 Moldovan election were cast in the names of deceased people, was repeated by ChatGPT, according to NewsGuard's analysis.

"Russia considers Moldova part of its historical and legitimate sphere of influence," Eugen Muravschi, an expert on Russian influence campaigns, told WatchDog.md, a Moldovan think tank that monitors foreign state influence operations. "It cannot tolerate Moldova distancing itself from Russia and moving closer to Europe."

Russia spreads an avalanche of lies

Situated between Ukraine and EU member Romania, the former Soviet republic of Moldova has a divided electorate between pro-Europeans and pro-Russians and has already been the target of Russian influence operations. The November 2024 presidential elections, which resulted in Sandu's re-election, were marred by what Josep Borrell, then EU foreign policy chief, called "unprecedented Russian interference," carried out through online propaganda and vote-buying.

Since the Moldovan Parliament scheduled parliamentary elections for September 28 in April 2025, Russia has intensified its efforts, launching an unprecedented campaign through multiple arms of the Kremlin's influence apparatus. Matrioska has published an average of three false claims a week since then, according to NewsGuard. Until a few months earlier, Moldova wasn't even among Moscow's targets.

Distracting the fact-checkers

Matrioska often generates little engagement when it produces its false content. Yet, according to David Chavalarias, research director of a European project against disinformation, the goal is also to "engage fact-checkers with crude and difficult-to-verify content." In many cases, Matrioska directly sends the false material to journalists and fact-checkers.

In a June 2025 report , Finnish software company CheckFirst and the international nonprofit Reset Tech found that, in May, President Sandu was targeted significantly more frequently than Russia's main enemy, Ukrainian President Zelensky, and French President Macron, Ukraine's most vocal supporter in Europe. According to CheckFirst's analysis, emails the organization received from Matrioska mentioned Sandu 75 times, Macron 28 times, and Zelensky 22 times.

A multi-front offensive

Matrioska's strategy to discredit Sandu is supported by Kremlin-linked websites, social media botnets, and other widely documented Russian influence operations. Seven of the fake videos and images identified by NewsGuard were amplified by the Pravda network, a Moscow-based network of approximately 150 anonymous websites that republish false information in multiple languages to influence search engine results and generative AI.

For example, the Romanian website MD.News-Pravda.com published articles about seven Matrioska videos, including one that claimed, without any evidence, that Sandu was using “psychotropic drugs” and fraudulently used the logo of the American Psychological Association, the largest association of psychologists in the United States.

How a false accusation went viral

Among the many false narratives targeting Sandu's government, one of the most viral questioned the legitimacy of his victory, claiming that mail-in votes had been rigged. The claim followed a pattern already widely used by Matrioska. The fake news first appeared in late May 2025 on a pro-Kremlin Telegram channel, with a video using the BBC logo and claiming that 42% of mail-in votes in the 2024 presidential election had been falsified using the identities of dead people.

The video attributed the news to Bellingcat and included a fake quote from founder Eliot Higgins: “This information will be eye-opening for Moldovan citizens to take note and take action.” Higgins confirmed to NewsGuard that the video is completely fake and the story is baseless.

The video was then reposted at the end of May 2025 on Instagram, Telegram, Facebook and X. In early June, the Pravda network further spread the news, publishing four articles in English and Romanian that repeated it.

Finally, in mid-June, the claim was amplified by a network of 50 anonymous TikTok accounts that posted similar videos within just 24 hours. The accounts displayed nearly identical behavioral practices, including regularly posting videos on the same topics within the same 24-hour intervals, using similar phrases in both Russian and Romanian, and using the same hashtags in both languages.

NewsGuard also identified similar campaigns on Instagram and Facebook, but on a smaller scale, with fewer than ten accounts involved on each platform.

In an email dated July 14, 2025, Meta stated that it had found no evidence of coordinated inauthentic behavior between the Instagram and Facebook accounts flagged by NewsGuard. However, the platform stated that it would require those accounts to complete an authenticity check.

After receiving a request for comment from NewsGuard, TikTok removed several posts containing false information. In an email dated July 14, 2025, the platform stated that it was investigating other videos promoting similar false claims.

A country on alert

Moscow already maintains a consolidated presence in Moldova in the breakaway Russian-speaking region of Transnistria, where Russian troops have been stationed since it became de facto independent in 1992. The region is able to sustain itself only thanks to “Russian military, economic and political support,” as the European Court of Human Rights stated in 2016.

Moldovan expert on Russian influence campaigns Eugen Muravschi told NewsGuard that the country's government is "gravely concerned" about Moscow's information manipulation operations targeting the local population and has taken countermeasures, such as a broadcast ban on Russian TV channels. However, Muravschi emphasized that government communication is often slow and ineffective, ultimately leaving room for Russian propaganda.

Muravschi also told NewsGuard that Moldova's parliamentary elections offer Russia an opportunity to halt the country's current pro-Western path and are "perhaps even more important" than the November 2024 vote. The expert added that "Russia wants to install a government that will halt or slow down Moldova's EU integration process [...]. The Kremlin does not want to lose Moldova."

NewsGuard contacted Moldovan Presidential Spokesperson Igor Zaharov, the Moldovan Security and Intelligence Service, and the Moldovan Center for Strategic Communication and Countering Disinformation for comment, but did not receive a response.

Moldova's presidential advisor on defense and security, Stanislav Secrieru, wrote in a Facebook post on June 13, 2025: “Modern warfare no longer begins with tanks on the border, but with soldiers in jeans and online propaganda.”

Supervised by Dina Contini and Eric Effron