Moldovan President Maia Sandu told a British podcast she would vote for unification with neighboring European Union and NATO member Romania if a referendum were held.
The pro-European president has repeatedly warned of Russian meddling in the ex-Soviet republic of 2.4 million people, most of them Romanian-speakers, lying between Romania and Ukraine.
She told British podcast “The Rest is Politics” in an interview released Sunday that it was “getting more and more difficult for a small country like Moldova to survive as a democracy, as a sovereign country, and of course to resist Russia.”
“If we have a referendum, I would vote for the unification with Romania,” she said.
She, however, conceded that “looking at the polls … there is not a majority of people today who would support the unification of Moldova with Romania.”
Under Sandu, Moldova has applied for EU membership, which she described as a “more realistic objective” in the interview.
Accession talks to join the 27-nation bloc began last year.
Sandu’s office could not be reached immediately on Monday.
Her party overwhelmingly won parliamentary elections in September, keeping Moldova on its pro-European path. Sandu won a second mandate in 2024.
Moldova has repeatedly reported violations of its airspace since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, with drones crashing on its soil and overflying its territory.
The country was part of Romania during the interwar period before World War II, when it was annexed by the Soviet Union. It declared independence in 1991.
