Russian leader Vladimir Putin is executing a long-term hybrid warfare operation to destabilize Moldova after prioritizing the conquest of Ukraine. The Kremlin's strategy involves creating a land corridor from southern Ukraine to Moldova. Key tools include electoral interference by recruiting and paying tens of thousands of Moldovans to influence elections and protests, dissemination of anti-EU propaganda via Russian Orthodox Church priests, physical training of operatives in secret camps in Serbia, Bosnia, and near Moscow to conduct sabotage, and cyber-operations. When covert influence failed fully, Russia resorted to kinetic attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure vital to Moldova’s electricity and water supply, causing blackouts and contamination near the Moldovan border. Moldovan authorities dismantled Russia-backed networks training operatives for destabilization and offered to share their counter-hybrid warfare expertise with European allies.

Russian leader Vladimir Putin is executing a long-term hybrid warfare operation to destabilize Moldova after prioritizing the conquest of Ukraine. The Kremlin's strategy involves creating a land corridor from southern Ukraine to Moldova. Key tools include electoral interference by recruiting and paying tens of thousands of Moldovans to influence elections and protests, dissemination of anti-EU propaganda via Russian Orthodox Church priests, physical training of operatives in secret camps in Serbia, Bosnia, and near Moscow to conduct sabotage, and cyber-operations. When covert influence failed fully, Russia resorted to kinetic attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure vital to Moldova’s electricity and water supply, causing blackouts and contamination near the Moldovan border. Moldovan authorities dismantled Russia-backed networks training operatives for destabilization and offered to share their counter-hybrid warfare expertise with European allies.