To sway the result, the Kremlin will stop at nothing \u2014 even spending hundreds of millions of euros to buy crucial votes, Sandu warned this week.<\/p>\n
This is a crucial moment for Moldova, more so than at any point in the last 35 years since gaining independence from the Soviet Union, Nicu Popescu, a former foreign minister now running on the PAS list, told POLITICO.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat is at stake is not just European integration of Moldova. It\u2019s, to a large degree, the freedom of Moldova and its independence,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Isolated PAS<\/p>\n
Since Sandu and her party rode a wave of optimism to secure decisive victories in 2020 and 2021, support has eroded, largely due to the adverse <\/strong>economic impact from Russia\u2019s war in Ukraine, then fueled by Moscow\u2019s relentless disinformation campaigns.<\/p>\n \u201cOf course, there\u2019s always a gap between expectations and delivery. Moldova has the same frustrations as elsewhere \u2014 inflation, purchasing power, energy costs,\u201d Popescu said.\u00a0<\/p>\n PAS has also failed to deliver on its anti-corruption and justice-reform promises, and struggled to connect with voters, said Valeriu Pa\u0219a, head of the Moldova-based WatchDog.MD think tank. \u201cPAS\u2019s biggest enemy right now is PAS,\u201d he said, \u201cbecause they\u2019re making all possible mistakes.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"To sway the result, the Kremlin will stop at nothing \u2014 even spending hundreds of millions of euros…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":448242,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5174],"tags":[33,28284,2000,299,5187,51099,13491,332,9322,333,335],"class_list":{"0":"post-448241","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-eu","8":"tag-elections","9":"tag-elections-in-europe","10":"tag-eu","11":"tag-europe","12":"tag-european","13":"tag-maia-sandu","14":"tag-moldova","15":"tag-russia","16":"tag-russian-politics","17":"tag-vladimir-putin","18":"tag-war-in-ukraine"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115260036517170761","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448241","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=448241"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448241\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/448242"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=448241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=448241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=448241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}