Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) said that Moldovan President Maia Sandu had demanded that the country’s government prepare a plan to take over the Cuciurgan power station in Transnistria.
Sandu held a meeting with the Moldovan government to discuss the country’s energy security issues, the SVR said in a statement on Monday. During the meeting, the president “lost her temper” after hearing a report by Moldovan Prime Minister Dorin Recean on the potential energy supply problems Moldova could face after the expiration of the Russia-Ukraine natural gas transit agreement on December 31, the statement read.
“The president was not sobered by the reminder that the right bank of Moldova is almost entirely dependent on electricity supplies from the Cuciurgan power station in Transnistria. After ‘flying into a rage,’ the president demanded that preparations be made for a violent seizure of the power station,” the SVR said.
Sandu flatly refused to discuss the issue of Moldova’s energy supplies with the Ukrainian authorities after the gas transit agreement expired, the statement added. The president said that if Moscow did not supply Moldova with natural gas, Chisinau would “take revenge” on Transnistria, according to the SVR.
The meeting concluded with Sandu’s remarks about the need to develop a military operation plan to establish control over Transnistria and eliminate the Russian peacekeeping presence in the region, the SVR said.
Since December 2022, Moldovagaz has been sourcing natural gas from Moldovan energy utility Energocom and Gazprom. The Russian gas is supplied to Transnistria in exchange for electricity, which is used to power the rest of Moldova. Moldova’s Cuciurgan power station covers 80% of the country’s electricity needs.
Transnistria, where Russians and Ukrainians make up 60% of the population, sought to secede from Moldova even before the collapse of the Soviet Union, fearing that Moldova would join Romania amid a wave of nationalism. In 1992, after an unsuccessful attempt by Moldovan authorities to resolve the issue by force, Transnistria became a de facto territory outside Chisinau’s control.
It’s been a bad few months for democracy. Election results offensive to the European Union were annulled in Romania; an attempted coup occurred in Georgia over elections that didn’t go the way the west wanted; the French government, widely hated, teetered over the abyss as president Emmanual Macron tried to ignore the last election; on December 16, Washington’s pet German government fell; lots of funny-business happened in the Moldovan referendum and election, amid widespread disenfranchisement of Moldovan voters living in Russia; elections were long ago cancelled in dictatorial Ukraine; and South Korea hosted an attempted coup. In short, western democracies’ storied enchantment with elections is over. As western populations grow sick and tired of their political class and vote against it, what are elites to do? Annul, cancel, overturn and ignore the elections, that’s what. The problem, for the west, is the voters.
What will happen if far-right Alternative for Deutschland sweeps the early German elections in February, or if far-left France Insoumise does the same in France? Will the U.S. through its NATO and EU tentacles annul those votes? Don’t think it won’t try. And Washington doesn’t even have to give the order, because its European puppets know exactly what’s expected of them. Granted, the Romanian front-runner, so feared by NATO, Calin Georgescu, was far right. But so what? Besides, I doubt that’s what led to the constitutional court vacating the vote. More likely it was his opposition to the Ukraine War – hence the court citing “foreign influence” (translation: Russian) via TikTok as its flimsy basis for negating the election. Incidentally, reports are coming in that the heat and internet to Georgescu’s house have been cut off, and, surprise! he can’t get anyone on the phone to help with this.
But you can’t blame European honchos for ditching elections. They’re just following Washington’s lead. After all, the post-2016 phony Russiagate hysteria may not have succeeded in ousting Trump, as was intended, but it did provide the template for American vassals. The four years of lawfare against Trump (and then another four after he left office) blazed the trail for Europe, so that now, if a candidate not favored by political bigwigs wins, all they have to do is scream “Russian influence!” to dump the election. In other words, democracy is dying in the west. It’s kicking the bucket in Europe – and if Trump ends the Ukraine War (provided Biden doesn’t utterly sabotage his peace efforts before he takes office) or gets us out of the NATO sinkhole, you can bet your paycheck the 2028 establishment campaign will dust off the 2016 playbook and get right to work.
In western media, Georgescu has been portrayed as an unknown. This is false. He is well-known in Romania and had a diplomatic career. But he is also a religious nationalist, and that’s verboten in the EU; worse yet, the U.S., aka NATO, built its biggest military airbase in Europe – where? You got it, Romania. So Washington can’t have just anybody running that country. It must be someone who will keep everything copacetic with the U.S. A nationalist opposed to Washington’s pet proxy war in Ukraine is not that someone.
As for Georgia, there the electorate proved itself most unreliable to the Exceptional Empire. It voted in a government that actually dares to require foreign NGOs to register as such – you know, the way we do, here in the United States. But here, those NGOs don’t aim to overthrow the government, like they do in Georgia, in order for Tbilisi to open a second front against Moscow. Indeed, the vast majority of rioters against the Georgian government, who were arrested, were – I’m shocked! Shocked! – foreign, i.e. European. The icing on the cake is that the French president of Georgia refused to leave office when her term expired – a president with French and Georgian passports, who boasts Nazis in her family tree.
The EU finagled things more successfully in Moldova. That nation’s October 20 referendum on joining the EU won – kinda. In country, the Moldovan government only snagged 50 percent of the vote, but Moldovan expats in Europe gave it a boost, while the 400,000 Moldovans living in Russia found, to their dismay, only two polling stations open for them, by their government, in Moscow. That meant as few as 10,000 of them got to vote. And as East European expert and political scientist Ivan Katchanovski tweeted October 21, many pro-Russian citizens in Transdniestria could not vote. So all in all, the Moldovan referendum was a sorry excuse for a democratic exercise. Then there was also Moldova’s presidential election, equally compromised. But hey, Washington’s EU vassal got to lure a country out of Russia’s orbit, and that’s all that counts, not mere democracy, right? After all, Washington doesn’t stand for democracy. It stands for and has long stood for something quite different – power. Just look at it backing a terrorist takeover of Syria, among them a ruler on whose head Washington has a $10,000,000 bounty. Let that sink in. One American hand posts a huge reward for a terrorist, while the other hand paves his way to power. The obvious conclusion (also obvious to any student of American-backed coups and regime changes abroad going back at least 70 years) is that U.S. doesn’t stand for anything besides power (certainly not anything as antiquated and nettlesome as international law). That’s the definition of a gangster state.
If you doubt that, just peek at South Korea, where the CIA’s man, president Yoon Suk Yeol, faced a grim electoral future. The voters were unlikely to support him in the next election, given that they mostly back the opposition. And that opposition, per Col. Douglas Macgregor, wants a Korean four-star general, not an American one, to head the roughly 500,000 Korean armed forces and also wants to boot the 30,000 U.S. troops off the peninsula. This, of course, goes over in Washington with all the joy of a root canal.
So what to do? Yoon took the bull by the horns December 3 with martial law. During the few hours when it looked like our man in Seoul had pulled off a coup, the Biden gang was coyly silent. But there is nothing enduring in this world, as Gogol noted, and even the most brazen attempts at subverting democracy occasionally fail. The opposition gathered and voted against Yoon. His defense minister was deposed, jailed and attempted suicide, and Yoon’s own tenure came now, ahem, under a cloud, to say the least, as insurrection charges loomed, and he was impeached and suspended from office.
And don’t forget France, where Macron, affronted by an EU parliament vote last summer that installed many anti-Ukraine War representatives, totally lost it and, quite idiotically and hubristically, called snap elections. He promptly lost those to the left, but then snubbed the voters by breaking with tradition and refusing to appoint a left-wing prime minister. Surprising no one, the center-rightist he chose received a vote of no confidence, and Macron’s government looked likely to fall. That was temporarily forestalled by the appointment, December 13, of a centrist prime minister. But if his government does ultimately crash, expect Macron to do something really stupid, like suspend the legislature, call a national emergency or, a la Yoon, declare martial law.
Lastly of course we have Ukraine, that shining example of democracy, where its president rules illegally, having cancelled elections, banned the opposition, throttled the press, exiled the church, jailed anyone he doesn’t like and press-ganged thousands of vehemently objecting Ukrainian men into the military. All this while ferociously lining his pockets with western, mainly American, funds. This is the tyranny upon which Biden bestows hundreds of billions of our hard-earned tax dollars. It’s not even supported by Ukrainians, most of whom, according to recent polls, want the war over. But Joe “War Is My Legacy” Biden, in his crazed enthusiasm for Ukrainian combat, just won’t stop. On December 11, Ukraine fired six ATACAMS into Russia. We can all thank God they did little damage, since the Russians shot two down and diverted four with electronic warfare. Had they inflicted real harm, we in the west might very well have had worse troubles than the death of democracy, namely death itself. Biden appears oblivious to this reality. For us, what’s at stake is life itself, and the whole, wondrous human and natural world. For him, it appears to be just another step on the path of endless war, another day, another dollar.
Eve Ottenberg is a novelist and journalist. Her latest novel is Booby Prize. She can be reached at her website.
Previous episodes of this series explained NATO’s senseless expansion that threatened Russia and caused a disastrous war in Ukraine. The plot to add Ukraine to NATO failed. As Russian troops advance to occupy all of Ukraine to secure it as a close ally, nearby nations may choose to join the prospering Russian led Eurasian Economic Union. Russia may encourage Ukraine’s neighboring nations to join its economic block with a return of Ukrainian land seized by the Soviets.
The loss of Eastern Europe would be a huge setback for the Anglo-American empire as members leave NATO and the EU to trade freely with Russia and China, or join a new Hungarian led Eastern Europe economic union that does not support EU and Anglo-American sanctions nor imperial adventures in Africa and Asia. This is likely to happen if Russian troops reach Ukraine’s western border to open the door to the east. As a result, the Anglo-American empire may risk World War III and send NATO troops into Ukraine to block further Russian advancement and halt a rebellion by its vassal states.
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“As EU Confirms Economic Punishments On China, U.S. Panics Over Impending Iran Oil Attack”; Sean Foo; YouTube; October 5, 2024; • As EU Confirms Economic Punishments O…
CHISINAU – Moldova’s Socialist Party said on Monday that it does not recognize the voting at foreign polling stations, thanks to which incumbent President Maia Sandu was declared the winner of the presidential election in the country.
Moldova held the runoff of a two-round presidential election on Sunday. With 99.86% of ballots tabulated at the time of the writing, Sandu is in the lead with 55.41% of the vote against her opponent, former Prosecutor General Alexandr Stoianoglo, with 44.59%.
“Maia Sandu became the ‘president of the diaspora.’ The Socialist Party of Moldova does not recognize the voting at foreign polling stations, thanks to which Sandu was declared the winner of the elections,” the party wrote on Telegram.
On October 20, a referendum was held on the Moldovan public’s interest in a constitutional reform to enable entry into the European Union. The “yes” vote won with 50.39%, a numerical margin of about 12,000 votes.
This result was well below expectations, considering all the government’s preparation and mobilization in support of the referendum.
Since Maia Sandu came to power, the goal has been to transform Moldova into a platform and tool for provocation and attack against Russia, similar to how Georgia and Ukraine were positioned in the past.
This had already begun even before Sandu’s election in 2020, with the free operation of Western or pro-Western NGOs in the country. According to various studies, there are around 14,000 NGOs registered in Moldova, a ratio of 1:200, with USAID having a strong direct presence in the country and indirect influence (as a funder of other NGOs).
USAID alone has invested more than $500 million in Moldova over the past 10 years. In terms of general funding, the West supports NGO activities in Moldova with $110 million annually. Besides USAID itself, other main NGO funders include the Open Society Foundation, the governments of Germany and the Netherlands, the NED, and Chatham House.
Among these “Moldovan” NGOs are Promo-LEX, IDIS Viitorul, the EEF (East Europe Foundation), WatchDog.MD, and the EBA (European Business Association), among others. All these groups work in areas like “promoting democracy and human rights” and “countering Russian disinformation.”
In recent years, these and many other NGOs have been actively shaping public opinion through social engineering techniques, aiming to “Ukrainize” Moldovans; that is, to turn Moldovans into Russophobic bots and compliant followers of Washington and Brussels.
With Sandu’s victory, Moldova’s automatic alignment with the West began. To achieve this, the nationalist sentiments of the population are naturally utilized, as the population historically identifies with Romania. However, this connection is manipulated not to foster a Romanian ethno-cultural identity but as a vehicle for the Westernization of Moldova.
When Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine began, Sandu seized the moment to formally apply for EU membership, despite Moldova’s constitution mandating geopolitical non-alignment. Shortly thereafter, the government started imposing censorship on the use of the Russian language in the country, as well as restricting Russian media and symbols, and even arrested her political rival, Igor Dodon. Predictably, Sandu quickly began indebting her country with multi-million euro loans from the European Union.
In the Moldovan narrative, Transnistria, a tiny strip of land with a Russian majority, poses a major threat to “Moldovan sovereignty.” Thus, Sandu decided to sacrifice Moldovan sovereignty in order to defend it. It makes no sense, but that’s how the minds of politicians who have been brainwashed by Western influence work.
Meanwhile, NATO stationed nearly 10,000 troops along the Moldovan border (even though foreign troops are prohibited on its territory), and the country faces frequent anti-government protests from citizens worried that the West might try to turn Moldova into another Ukraine.
This brings us to the referendum on constitutional reform aimed at EU integration. The result, although “victorious,” was disappointing, considering all the money spent promoting the EU, the imprisonment of opposition members, media censorship, and social engineering efforts by NGOs. Even this victory was only achieved through fraud. If you look closely at the referendum maps, you get the impression that the “no” vote won over the “yes.” And that’s exactly what happened: only 46% of Moldova’s residents voted for the reform. The majority of the country’s population voted against EU integration. In all of Gagauzia and the northern regions, opposition to the EU was nearly unanimous, and even in the center of the country, a significant portion of the population voted against joining the EU.
That’s when the “expatriate” population came into play—those who don’t live in the country, don’t share its fate, yet feel entitled to decide on its future. Out of 235,000 diaspora votes, 180,000 supported EU membership. The trick was simple: they increased the number of polling stations in Western countries while in Russia, where 500,000 Moldovans live (half the diaspora and one-sixth of all Moldovans worldwide), they reduced polling stations from 17 to 2, with only 10,000 ballots available.
The conclusion, therefore, is that under democratic rules, the Eurocrats and globalists would be soundly defeated at the polls. But since they don’t really care about democracy, they ensured that only the “right people” could vote.
Moldovan President Maia Sandu must substantiate her claims about “criminal groups” interfering with Sunday’s presidential vote and a referendum on pro-EU constitutional changes, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists on Monday. Such strong accusations should not be made without a hint of proof, he said.
Late on Sunday, when the votes were still being counted, Sandu, who is seeking her second presidential term, claimed in a public statement that there was “clear evidence” of criminal groups supposedly working together with “foreign forces hostile to our national interests” in order to interfere with the voting.
According to the president, those malign forces sought to buy hundreds of thousands of votes in what she described as “fraud of unprecedented scale.” Sandu then vowed to “respond with firm decisions” to the perceived transgressions.
The Moldovan leader did not name any specific groups she believed could be behind the irregularities, nor did she present any specific evidence to back up her claims.
“This is a rather serious accusation,” Peskov said, commenting on the issue. “Some evidence must be presented to the public” to substantiate it, he added. If Sandu believes she had not received votes because of some gangs, she should present clear proof of that, the Kremlin spokesman said, adding that “it would be nice if she explained the number of votes that disagreed with her line.”
“Does she mean that Moldovan citizens who do not support her are associated with criminal groups?” Peskov asked.
Moldovan citizens residing in Western nations, whose ballots were counted last, reportedly tipped the balance in favor of the pro-EU amendments. The ‘yes’ vote gained the support of 50.31% of voters while 49.69% voted against.
Sandu also received a boost to her election performance, with her final result amounting to 42% of the vote, up from the 38% earlier reported by Reuters. Her main rival, the Party of Socialists’ Alexandr Stoianoglo, got 26%. Peskov questioned how such a large change is possible, saying it was “difficult to explain.”
Prior to the vote, the Moldovan authorities claimed they had found evidence of Russian meddling attempts. Police arrested hundreds of people, accusing them of being part of an alleged “vote-buying scheme,” according to AFP. Law enforcement officials also claimed this week that up to a quarter of the ballots could supposedly be “tainted by Russian cash.”
In her post-election statement, Sandu stopped short of pointing the finger at Russia. Brussels still accused Moscow of what it called “unprecedented interference and intimidation” in the wake of the voting.
Since neither of the candidates managed to secure an absolute majority in the Sunday vote, Sandu will face off against Stoianoglo in a runoff on November 3.
Brussels has accused Moscow of pressuring Moldova over its EU integration referendum and presidential election on Sunday.
A constitutional amendment which sets the goal of eventually joining the European Union is poised to pass by a razor-thin margin. Russia has called the vote unfree and described it as suspicious.
On Monday, EU spokesman Peter Stano said, “We noted that this vote took place under unprecedented interference and intimidation by Russia and its proxies aiming to destabilize the democratic processes.”
Early results reported by Moldovan election officials indicated a slight majority of votes cast against the constitutional amendment proposed by pro-Western President Maia Sandu, who is running for a second term in office. During counting overnight, the pro-integration vote pulled into the lead.
Sandu declared victory on the issue after 98.6% of the votes were counted, with preliminary results showing 50.27% of the vote cast in favor and 49.73% against. Moldovan citizens residing in Western nations, whose ballots were counted last, reportedly tipped the balance in favor of the initiative.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Monday that the dynamics of the tally were “difficult to explain.”
“Any observers with basic understanding of political processes can attest to those anomalies with the vote count,” Peskov said. He added that considering Chisinau’s crackdown on the opposition, the reported outcome was significant.
Moscow previously claimed that the Moldovan government restricted the ability of citizens living in Russia to participate in the vote. Only two polling stations worked in the country, with 5,000 ballots available at each, while an estimated 500,000 Moldovan citizens live in Russia, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said earlier this month.
The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) praised Moldovan officials for the organization of the election, but acknowledged that it had issues with opposition representation. The conditions “did not provide the contestants with a level playing field,” Urszula Gacek, the head of the body’s observer mission, said on Monday.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen visited Moldova earlier this month to meet with Sandu and announce an EU plan to invest €1.8 billion ($1.95bn) in the country’s economy between 2025 and 2027. She urged Moldovans to vote for the president’s proposal.
An observer at a Moldovan presidential election polling station in the central Italian city of Perugia has told RT she faced threats from the local election committee.
On Sunday, Moldovans at home and abroad voted for their new leader in an election that also involved a referendum on whether to include the nation’s EU aspirations in its constitution.
The observer, Larisa Brunescu, told RT by phone that election officials had allowed her into the polling station, but wanted to force her out once she tried to film what was going on inside.
“They told me I should not send any videos, [record] conversations, [send] figures, nothing,” Brunescu, who represents the Renaissance Party of former Prime Minister Vasile Tarlev, said.
According to Brunescu, at one point, she was told that the documents allowing her to be an observer were “not OK” and that she should leave.
The committee claimed her documents were not “filled out properly,” Brunescu said, which she denied. Election officials “were openly threatening” her, she added.
According to Brunescu, the committee also tried to prevent her from taking photos, and insisted that she could only report figures which they would provide. The officials looked at her “like dogs,” she added.
The actions of the committee members “speak of some serious irregularities,” Brunescu believes. She claimed that she counted fewer than 1,000 voters at the polling station, though the committee had “4,000 ballots.”
“They can rig the ballots,” she added, while acknowledging that she did not see the committee actually doing so.
Earlier on Sunday, Moldova’s opposition Victory alliance accused the authorities of allowing massive violations at the polling stations, claiming that hundreds of irregularities were reported during the first half of the day. The political bloc also stated that observers were outright banned from accessing some polling stations both at home and abroad “without any valid reasons.” Victory also accused the authorities of suppressing votes that it deemed undesirable.
Moldovan President Maia Sandu was seeking a second term, running against Alexandr Stoianoglo, a former prosecutor general, and Renato Usatii, a former mayor of Moldova’s second largest city, Balti, with seven other candidates also running.
Five out of ten candidates criticized the referendum, arguing that it was held only to ensure Sandu’s reelection. On Sunday evening, it was reported that most voters rejected the pro-EU constitutional changes.
Moldova has been actively pushing for EU and NATO membership since 2020, when Sandu, a critic of Russia and supporter of EU integration, came to power. The opposition has criticized the president for failing to resolve the economic and energy crisis in the country, which is among the poorest in Europe.
A knife-edge majority of Moldovans have approved incumbent pro-Western President Maia Sandu’s EU accession plans, election officials said on Monday, following an almost complete count of a ballot on the issue.
According to Moldova’s Central Electoral Commission, with 99.5% of the ballots counted, 50.4% of voters backed Sandu’s plan to enshrine integration with the EU in the former Soviet country’s constitution, while 49.6% voted against the step.
The tally came as something of a surprise, given that preliminary results issued late on Sunday had indicated that a slight majority of voters were against the move. According to media reports, the ‘yes’ camp received a last-minute push from ballots cast by Moldovans living abroad, which were counted towards the end.
The ‘yes’ vote means Moldova’s constitution will be supplemented with two new paragraphs. One will state that the identity of the Moldovans will be changed to ‘Europeans’, while the second will name integration into the EU as a strategic goal of the country.
A total of over 1.5 million people, or more than 51% of the electorate, cast their votes in Sunday’s referendum, well above the one-third required for the ballot to be considered valid.
While the referendum has revealed a nearly 50-50 split among Moldovans over EU integration, it is expected that Sandu, who is seeking a second term in office, will press ahead with the plan if reelected.
In a simultaneous presidential election held on Sunday, the incumbent leader failed to secure an absolute majority of 50% plus one vote. Sandu is now set to face off with former prosecutor general Alexandr Stoianoglo, leader of the Party of Socialists (PSRM), in a runoff scheduled for November 3. The two garnered 41.9% and 26.3% of the vote respectively in the first round.
Earlier on Monday, Sandu challenged Stoianoglo to a debate, saying that the two should present their ideas on the country’s future to the public and let Moldovans decide which path to take. Stoianoglo has accepted the challenge, but suggested the debate be held on a “neutral platform,” not those of “government-dependent media.” Sandu has been repeatedly criticized for the reported closure of news outlets that are not pro-Western, as well as for allegedly targeting opposition figures and those who do not support her EU drive.
Voters in Moldova have rejected the government-backed proposal to enshrine eventual integration with the EU in the former Soviet country’s constitution.
During Sunday’s referendum, held simultaneously with a presidential election, voters were asked whether the constitution should be amended to reflect the “irreversible European course” of the country and affirm the “integration into the European Union as a strategic objective” of the nation.
With more than 86% of the ballots counted, 54.55% voted against the proposal, while 45.45% voted in favor, according to the preliminary results cited by the news channel TVR.
The highly contentious presidential election is likely heading to a second-round runoff, as no candidate has succeeded in winning 50% of the votes.
With more than 85% of the ballots counted, the pro-EU incumbent president, Maia Sandu, is leading with 37.08%. Former prosecutor general Alexandr Stoianoglo, the leader of the Party of Socialists (PSRM), is second with 29.1%.
The high-stakes election was marred by the accusations of rigging and voter manipulation from the government and the opposition alike.
The opposition alliance ‘Victory’ accused the authorities of allowing irregularities, ranging from organized busing of voters to polling stations to allegations of voter intimidation.
Chisinau, meanwhile, has accused Russia of attempting to influence the outcome of the election and has shut down several TV channels critical to the government. “Moldova has come under an unprecedented attack. Criminal groups, united with foreign powers, have attacked our country with lies and propaganda,” Sandu said during a press conference shortly after the preliminary results were announced. She claimed to have “evidence and information that a criminal group had attempted to buy 300,000 votes.”
The election, widely seen as pivotal to Moldova’s aspirations to join the EU, were dominated by the issues of corruption and low living standards, as well security concerns stemming from the ongoing fighting between Russia and Ukraine.
Moldovan authorities are preparing a bill that will allow the blocking of websites, channels and accounts on social media, a spokesman for Moldovan opposition political bloc Podeda (Victory), Veaceslav Jukov, said on Tuesday.
Earlier in the day, the country’s authorities annulled a broadcasting license held by Moldova’s Media Resurse company which owned two Russian language broadcasters, Orhei TV and TV6, Moldovan news outlet NewsMaker reported.
“The Moldovan government is considering a law which presupposes the suspension and even elimination of websites, as well as blocking channels and accounts on social media. The new legislation provides measures to control and manage the information space ,” Jukov wrote on Telegram.
In 2023, Moldovan authorities blocked access to 31 websites, including 21 managed from Russia, saying that they had been used in an “information war” against Kishinev. Apart from the Russian information sources, Kishinev has also banned websites of Moldovan broadcasters Orizont TV, Prime TV, Publika TV, Canal 2, and Canal 3, among others.
Earlier in 2023, Moldovan President Maia Sandu said that Moldova would create a national center for informational defense and combating propaganda symbolically named Patriot, which would protect Moldovan citizens from disinformation and manipulation at a national level. The new center will counter Russia’s alleged information attacks as well as deal with “traitors to the homeland” who are allegedly blocking Moldova’s attempts to integrate into the European Union, Sandu added.
Moldova should grow closer to Russia, so it would be worth discussing the possibility of joining the Union State of Russia and Belarus, Moldovan opposition politician Ilan Shor, the leader of “Pobeda” (Victory) political bloc, told Russian media.
“Russia is our friend, our partner; we should move forward together. Moreover, I believe that there is a possibility to expand even the format of the Russia-Belarus Union State. There is a possibility for consideration and for dialogue. This is important,’ Shor clarified.
According to the politician, only by uniting could Moldova and Russia stand against the West, as Moldova itself is needed by the West only for its own purposes.
“Why do they need Moldova? And I’ll tell you – it’s a testing ground. A testing ground of free hands for war. It’s a testing ground to bully. Maybe they’ll send immigrants to us at some point. We have nothing in common with them. Here [with Russia and Belarus] we’ve been in the same family for years, we know each other, we speak the same language. We understand each other, we have common values,” he added.
Most Moldovans believe in a future with the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), Shor said at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum.
“We believe that the only way out for the Republic of Moldova today is to become a full-fledged, full member of the EAEU. We really understand today that we want to become a participant of the platform, a unified platform in the field of economy, in the field of ideology, in the field of foreign policy, in the field of security policy. Today this is more important for Moldova than ever,” Shor emphasized, addressing the SPIEF session “The Greater Eurasian Partnership as a New Pole of Growth: Potential and Prospects”.
Shor claimed that the majority of Moldovan voters have already become disillusioned with the European Union and European values, as politicians who entered power on these slogans are closing opposition television channels in the republic and removing unwanted politicians from elections.
“We clearly understand that today the majority of the people of Moldova believe in a future with the EAEU… We have had enough of fairy tales and carrots on sticks for the last 20 years. Today we want real friendship, cooperation and mutual understanding and relations,” he declared.
The so-called “rules-based international order” aims to facilitate a hegemonic world, which entails displacing international law. While international law is based on equal sovereignty for all states, the rules-based international order upholds hegemony on the principle of sovereign inequality.
The rules-based international order is commonly presented as international law plus international human rights law, which appears benign and progressive. However, this entails introducing contradictory principles and rules. The consequence is a system devoid of uniform rules, in which “might makes right”. International human rights law introduces a set of rules to elevate the rights of the individual, yet human-centric security often contradicts state-centric security as the foundation of international law.
The US as the hegemonic state can then choose between human-centric security and state-centric security, while adversaries must abide strictly by state-centric security due to their alleged lack of liberal democratic credentials. For example, state-centric security as the foundation of international law insists on the territorial integrity of states, while human-centric security allows for secession under the principle of self-determination. The US will thus insist on territorial integrity in allied countries such as Ukraine, Georgia or Spain, while supporting self-determination within adversarial states such as Serbia, China, Russia and Syria. The US can interfere in the domestic affairs of adversaries to promote liberal democratic values, yet the US adversaries do not have the right to interfere in the domestic affairs of the US. To facilitate a hegemonic international order, there cannot be equal sovereignty for all states. … continue
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The word “alleged” is deemed to occur before the word “fraud.” Since the rule of law still applies. To peasants, at least.
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