Moldova enters a critical phase for fighting disinformation

Moldovan citizens will go to the polls for presidential elections and a referendum on the country’s future EU integration in October, but for Chisinau’s pro-EU government, the bigger challenge until then is the fight against Russian disinformation.

Experts have estimated that the Kremlin spent approximately $50 million on disinformation and hybrid warfare efforts in Moldova in 2023. They expect this to double to $100 million in 2024.

This money is spent to bribe politicians, fund influencers, pay for advertisements, and for outright voter bribery.

While the Moldovan authorities have had some success in intercepting illicit money flows and restricting the licenses of Kremlin-linked TV and radio channels, disinformation continues to spread widely. 

A three-party coalition

Valeriu Pasha, a policy expert and president of the Watchdog.md community, said there are three main actors in combating disinformation.

Firstly, there is the government which has prioritised debunking and pre-bunking disinformation narratives in the last year.

Two years ago, the government almost never directly responded to disinformation, now government spokesman Daniel Voda speaks to the press weekly, sometimes daily, about whatever new narratives are being disseminated. 

The second actor is civil society organisations. Pasha explained that think tanks like Watchdog and others help combat disinformation by doing research, monitoring trends, and making recommendations.

The key to this work, he said, is to “stay ahead of the narratives” as they evolve over time. Within civil society groups, there are successful bloggers and social media influencers, who use this information and their personal audiences to spread the word, and who particularly engage in pre-bunking false narratives.

One example is comedian and influencer Andrei Bolocan, who has increasingly focused on countering false narratives in the past few years. 

The third pillar of this coalition is the traditional independent media.

Pasha said media are the most important component of combating disinformation because of their wide reach and ability to amplify messages debunking disinformation from civil society groups or the government. 

Weaknesses and mutual interdependence

While each element of this informal coalition recognises the threat and is working within its own sphere to combat it, many challenges persist.

One is a lack of clear proactive communication. Russian disinformation actively exploits gaps in public understanding of key issues.

One example is the recent announcement of the signing of a security and defence partnership between Moldova and the EU.

The EU’s chief diplomat Josep Borrell noted the unprecedented nature of this agreement, stating that Moldova is the first partner country to do so.

“This partnership will increase the country’s resilience and provide new opportunities for cooperation,” Borrell said.

However, neither the EU nor the Moldovan government has clarified what such a partnership would mean in practice.

At the same time, this gives Russian disinformation an advantage as they press forward narratives equating cooperation with the West to being a party to Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Similarly, when the Moldovan government announces reforms or new policies without fully detailed explanations, Russian proxies swiftly fill the information vacuum with populist or disinformation narratives. 

Media also face challenges with proactive communication, according to Pasha, who noted that not one Moldovan TV station or major media outlet has a dedicated reporter in the areas of economics or security.

Civil society groups work to fill these gaps with expertise and analysis but face an uphill battle, struggling with capacity and funding. 

Gaps in capacity

One thing holding back both the government and media’s ability to better combat disinformation is lack of human resources. In a small country with a limited media market, there simply  is not enough tax money or advertising sales to hire enough people to cope with the massive investment being made in disinformation. 

Making this more complicated, Pasha noted that the effectiveness of EU support in this area has limits. Too much emphasis is put on traditional methods of communication and support such as conferences and training.

As of May, the EU commits money to generally support independent media but has no targeted financing or support for anti-disinformation efforts. A lack of strategic, long term funding for proactive and reactive campaigns hampers efforts to inform the public, according to Pasha. 

Finally, the biggest challenge in combating disinformation is in the impunity with which Kremlin cutouts operate. 

In Moldova, not a single person has been held accountable for receiving, transporting or spending illicit foreign funding in disinformation or political campaigns.

Just last week, a judge was convicted of helping to launder $200 million dollars of illicit Russian money back in 2016. Unfortunately, the case has spent so much time working through the courts that the conviction came with no penalties as the statute of limitations expired.

Moldovan authorities have charged many people over illicit financing but so far no case has progressed significantly in court, which only encourages potential perpetrators.

This article is part of the FREIHEIT media project on Europe’s Neighbourhood, funded by the European Media and Information Fund (EMIF).

[Edited by Alexandra Brzozowski/Zoran Radosavljevic]

Read more with Euractiv