Editor’s Note: Dr. Dumitru Minzarari is a Lecturer in Security Studies with the Department of Political and Strategic Studies at the Baltic Defence College. Previously, Dr. Minzarari was a research associate working on Russia at the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik in Berlin and was both a research fellow and a visiting scholar with the Research Division at the NATO Defence College in Rome. He also formerly worked as the Secretary of State (for defense policy and international cooperation) with the Moldovan Ministry of Defense; held expert positions in OSCE field missions in Georgia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan; and worked with a number of think tanks in Eastern Europe.
By Rachel Stohl, Director, Conventional Defense Program
Introduction
As the United States continues to press for a negotiated end to the fighting in Ukraine, few outside onlookers have as much at stake as the Republic of Moldova. Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 fundamentally altered the regional security landscape for the Republic of Moldova, eroding the psychological and territorial buffer that Ukraine once provided against Russia’s long-held irredentist claims over Moldova. Accordingly, as the United States pressures its partners to reach settlement terms, Moldova faces the stark reality that any plausible outcome of US-brokered talks is likely to leave it more vulnerable to Russian pressure, coercion, and military intervention.
An Altered Threat Landscape
Prior to 2022, Moldovan threat assessments assumed that the geographic depth provided by Ukraine would obstruct Moscow’s use of direct military action to advance its ambitions of installing a Kremlin-loyal government in Chisinau and transforming the country into a Russian satellite state. Though Moscow maintained a military presence in the Russian-supported breakaway region of Transnistria, relations between Moldova and Russia operated on the belief that the odds of a direct intervention were remote. Russia’s 2022 invasion upended those assumptions.
At the outset of the 2022 invasion, Russia also sought to cut Kyiv off from the Black Sea by seizing the Odesa region — an effort that reportedly failed only because officers leading the marine infantry units assigned to an amphibious assault on the city refused to carry out the operation. This objective has not been abandoned and remains a priority for the Russian military. As a result, Moldova could eventually find itself sharing a direct border with Russia, eliminating the logistical (reinforcement of troops) constraints that have so far limited more aggressive Russian actions. Notably, during a broadcasted meeting with students several years ago, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov reportedly cited the lack of a shared border with Moldova as a key obstacle to Russian action in Transnistria.
Another consequence of the war is the erosion of the psychological barrier against using military force to annex another state’s territory. Moldova’s strategic thinking, official documents, and policies were built on the near-zero assumption that Russia would cross this threshold. Its approach to negotiations with Russia over the Transnistrian conflict was implicitly shaped by this premise. Likewise, the logic underpinning Moldova’s “constitutional neutrality” imposed under Moscow’s pressure in 1994 — and already deeply flawed due to the continued presence of Russian troops in the Transnistrian region despite repeated calls for their withdrawal — rested on the same expectation. In reality, Russia’s open military aggression against Ukraine has rendered much of Moldova’s existing security strategy thinking and policy obsolete, a challenge that remains insufficiently addressed even after more than four years of war.
A third effect concerns the exposure of Moldova as a “soft” target in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Moldovan authorities have not done enough to strengthen national deterrence and defense, while the population remains significantly susceptible to Russian influence operations. The continued presence of Russian forces in the Transnistrian region further heightens these risks, as the region persistently looms as a potential launchpad for actions against Moldovan constitutional authorities.
An Armed Attack
Short of Ukraine pushing Russian forces back to the east, any plausible outcome is likely to significantly worsen Moldova’s security risks. Any peace agreement brokered by the current Trump administration will only be temporary. This provisional nature stems from what analysts describe as a commitment problem. This obstacle implies that the parties cannot credibly promise to maintain the agreement in the future, which eventually could be imposed by the United States on Ukraine, as the more vulnerable party to such pressure.
Even in such a scenario, hostilities are likely to resume sooner rather than later. First, neither Ukraine nor Russia would find the settlement fully acceptable, making renewed fighting likely once either side perceives a strategic advantage. Second, as both countries rebuild their militaries, each will assess the prospects of a successful campaign more favorably. Finally, the re-emergence of fighting is highly likely, unless a third party deploys substantial forces to separate Russian and Ukrainian troops and enforce the agreement. This arrangement, however, is improbable given the significant and sustained expected costs of maintaining such a force over the long term.
In other words, a ceasefire would allow the Russian Federation to reconstitute its military forces and resume its offensive with renewed vigor and greater effects. Given the asymmetry in resources between the two countries, even though both Ukraine and Russia would use the pause to rebuild their capabilities, Russia will gain a comparative advantage. This would increase the likelihood of a successful Russian attempt to seize the Odesa region and establish a land corridor from Crimea to Moldova’s Transnistrian region.
Because isolating Ukraine from the Black Sea remains a key intermediate objective for Russia in this war, Moscow has a strong incentive to use any ceasefire to prepare the combat involvement of armed forces that it controls in the Transnistrian region. An optimal scenario for Russia in Moldova would be the installation in power of pro-Kremlin proxies, which have already made notable gains in the 2025 parliamentary elections.
A Political Proxy Attack
Therefore, even before any renewed Russian offensive in Ukraine, a ceasefire would allow Russia to redirect its attention and resources toward consolidating and exploiting its strategic advantages in the region. The Russian military-controlled enclave in Moldova’s Transnistrian region represents one such potential advantage. To capitalize on it, Russian planners are likely to intensify efforts to gain political control over Moldova, using local political proxies as their primary instruments.
Despite extensive media coverage highlighting the current Moldovan authorities’ supposed success in thwarting Russian attempts to hijack the 2024 presidential and, subsequently, the 2025 parliamentary elections, Russian authorities appear to have invested relatively little in the campaigns. Signals suggest that the Kremlin may have treated Moldova only as a pilot project, testing the waters. For example, the foiled 2023 Russian “insurrection plot” reportedly involved only 10 groups, totaling around 100 individuals, who aimed to provoke violence during public protests. Such a limited effort, lacking an accompanying kinetic component, seems unlikely to achieve meaningful power-transition objectives. Subsequent attempts to interfere in elections were similarly restrained, relying primarily on local Russian proxies, including the political network of fugitive oligarch Ilan Sor.
According to Moldovan authorities’ investigative efforts, Ilan Sor was behind attempts to buy votes during both the 2024 presidential and 2025 parliamentary elections, reportedly spending $39 million and over $100 million, respectively. This appears less like an operation led by Russian intelligence and more like outsourced work carried out by Sor, who was eager to curry favor with his high-level contacts in Moscow. These efforts resemble superficial attempts to support local proxies and test the Moldovan authorities’ responses and methods. In other words, Russian planners may be holding back when it comes to serious interference or intervention efforts in Moldova.
Despite these failed efforts, domestic political conditions in Moldova appear increasingly favorable to Russian indirect aggression through a major political operation. This assessment depends on the indicators selected to measure the degree of Russian penetration into Moldovan politics. The most reliable indicators of the level of Russian influence in Moldova are, arguably, related to electoral outcomes, comparing results before and after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Between 2021 and 2025, Russian proxies in the Moldovan parliament reduced the number of seats held by pro-European forces by eight, from 63 to 55. A more telling indicator, however, is the vote margin: The gap between pro-European forces and Russian proxies in parliament shrank from 291,891 votes in 2021 to 98,336 votes in 2025.
To Russian planners, this represents a significant victory given the underlying dynamics. In the political confrontations typical of a hybrid war, the key objective is often to reduce the gap with the electoral competitor to a manageable level, since victory can be engineered through active measures and other interventions during the electoral process. An emboldened, risk-acceptant Russia, now positioned much closer to Moldova’s borders, is more likely to deploy the kind of kinetic tools that enabled it to seize control of Donbas in 2014. Current indicators, combined with the lack of effective countermeasures by Moldovan authorities, make the country an appealing “soft” target, as vulnerabilities naturally attract foreign aggression.
Mismatch of Strategy
For Moldova, negotiations over the war in Ukraine are less a question of whether its security circumstances will deteriorate, but about how and how quickly. Unfortunately, Moldova has yet to lay out a well-calibrated strategy for post-conflict scenarios. While Moldovan authorities appear to see the country’s European Union membership as the primary solution to its national security challenges, the lengthy time horizon for ascension to the bloc, along with the absence of any credible institutionalized framework for collective defense, suggests that EU membership is not a sufficient deterrent. Moreover, although an unspoken assumption persists that Ukraine will continue to keep Russian forces at bay along the Black Sea, this too depends on the course of the war, with few safeguards in place should Kyiv’s position along the corridor between Odesa and Transnistria deteriorate.
As the conflict enters a new phase and the prospect of a negotiated cessation of one kind or another becomes more likely, Moldova must confront the reality that any settlement will introduce new and serious security risks. Lacking NATO’s collective defense guarantees or alternative (bilateral or multilateral) defense assistance agreements, few countries are as exposed as Moldova in a post-conflict Ukraine scenario.
Although the country has gradually increased its defense and security investments since 2022, there has been little meaningful qualitative shift that has improved its ability to effectively safeguard its sovereignty and territorial integrity.
There are a few options available for Moldova that would entail radically changing its security policy and addressing several obvious strategic deficiencies. For instance, Moldova has not organized its citizens along a total defense model, as the Baltic states have done. Nor has it pursued bilateral or regional defense arrangements in the event of an attack, or undertaken efforts to mobilize the public in line with a “rally ‘round the flag” logic, including by seeking to loosen the constraints of neutrality. Any of these actions can signal a stronger resolve to bear costs and accept risks, thereby strengthening the country’s deterrence posture. Even so, none can substitute for membership in a defensive alliance, given the scale of the Russian threat.
Given this narrow range of policy choices and the limited time to act, an end to the fighting in Ukraine would leave Moldova facing a distinctly unfavorable security environment. In this context, Chisinau must begin having more candid and bold discussions with its public, regional partners, and international allies about how to prepare for eventual outcomes in Ukraine and the very real threats to its sovereignty that an end to the fighting is likely to trigger.
Header image: European leaders in Kyiv for the 4th anniversary of Ukraine invasion – 2026. By Dati Bendo / European Union, 2026 / EC – Audiovisual Service
The Impact of US-Sponsored Ukraine-Russia Talks on Moldova’s Security
By Dumitru Minzarari
Conventional Arms
Editor’s Note: Dr. Dumitru Minzarari is a Lecturer in Security Studies with the Department of Political and Strategic Studies at the Baltic Defence College. Previously, Dr. Minzarari was a research associate working on Russia at the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik in Berlin and was both a research fellow and a visiting scholar with the Research Division at the NATO Defence College in Rome. He also formerly worked as the Secretary of State (for defense policy and international cooperation) with the Moldovan Ministry of Defense; held expert positions in OSCE field missions in Georgia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan; and worked with a number of think tanks in Eastern Europe.
By Rachel Stohl, Director, Conventional Defense Program
Introduction
As the United States continues to press for a negotiated end to the fighting in Ukraine, few outside onlookers have as much at stake as the Republic of Moldova. Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 fundamentally altered the regional security landscape for the Republic of Moldova, eroding the psychological and territorial buffer that Ukraine once provided against Russia’s long-held irredentist claims over Moldova. Accordingly, as the United States pressures its partners to reach settlement terms, Moldova faces the stark reality that any plausible outcome of US-brokered talks is likely to leave it more vulnerable to Russian pressure, coercion, and military intervention.
An Altered Threat Landscape
Prior to 2022, Moldovan threat assessments assumed that the geographic depth provided by Ukraine would obstruct Moscow’s use of direct military action to advance its ambitions of installing a Kremlin-loyal government in Chisinau and transforming the country into a Russian satellite state. Though Moscow maintained a military presence in the Russian-supported breakaway region of Transnistria, relations between Moldova and Russia operated on the belief that the odds of a direct intervention were remote. Russia’s 2022 invasion upended those assumptions.
At the outset of the 2022 invasion, Russia also sought to cut Kyiv off from the Black Sea by seizing the Odesa region — an effort that reportedly failed only because officers leading the marine infantry units assigned to an amphibious assault on the city refused to carry out the operation. This objective has not been abandoned and remains a priority for the Russian military.1The expectation is that the US-driven talks will either buy time for Russia to reconstitute its forces and attempt another offensive or force Ukraine to cede territories. In any of these cases, the distance between Moldova and Russia is greatly reduced, allowing a more feasible Russian support of its currently reduced military presence in the Transnistrian region. As a result, Moldova could eventually find itself sharing a direct border with Russia, eliminating the logistical (reinforcement of troops) constraints that have so far limited more aggressive Russian actions. Notably, during a broadcasted meeting with students several years ago, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov reportedly cited the lack of a shared border with Moldova as a key obstacle to Russian action in Transnistria.
Another consequence of the war is the erosion of the psychological barrier against using military force to annex another state’s territory. Moldova’s strategic thinking, official documents, and policies were built on the near-zero assumption that Russia would cross this threshold. Its approach to negotiations with Russia over the Transnistrian conflict was implicitly shaped by this premise. Likewise, the logic underpinning Moldova’s “constitutional neutrality” imposed under Moscow’s pressure in 1994 — and already deeply flawed due to the continued presence of Russian troops in the Transnistrian region despite repeated calls for their withdrawal — rested on the same expectation. In reality, Russia’s open military aggression against Ukraine has rendered much of Moldova’s existing security strategy thinking and policy obsolete, a challenge that remains insufficiently addressed even after more than four years of war.
A third effect concerns the exposure of Moldova as a “soft” target in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Moldovan authorities have not done enough to strengthen national deterrence and defense, while the population remains significantly susceptible to Russian influence operations. The continued presence of Russian forces in the Transnistrian region further heightens these risks, as the region persistently looms as a potential launchpad for actions against Moldovan constitutional authorities.
An Armed Attack
Short of Ukraine pushing Russian forces back to the east, any plausible outcome is likely to significantly worsen Moldova’s security risks. Any peace agreement brokered by the current Trump administration will only be temporary. This provisional nature stems from what analysts describe as a commitment problem. This obstacle implies that the parties cannot credibly promise to maintain the agreement in the future, which eventually could be imposed by the United States on Ukraine, as the more vulnerable party to such pressure.
Even in such a scenario, hostilities are likely to resume sooner rather than later. First, neither Ukraine nor Russia would find the settlement fully acceptable, making renewed fighting likely once either side perceives a strategic advantage. Second, as both countries rebuild their militaries, each will assess the prospects of a successful campaign more favorably. Finally, the re-emergence of fighting is highly likely, unless a third party deploys substantial forces to separate Russian and Ukrainian troops and enforce the agreement. This arrangement, however, is improbable given the significant and sustained expected costs of maintaining such a force over the long term.
In other words, a ceasefire would allow the Russian Federation to reconstitute its military forces and resume its offensive with renewed vigor and greater effects. Given the asymmetry in resources between the two countries, even though both Ukraine and Russia would use the pause to rebuild their capabilities, Russia will gain a comparative advantage. This would increase the likelihood of a successful Russian attempt to seize the Odesa region and establish a land corridor from Crimea to Moldova’s Transnistrian region.
Because isolating Ukraine from the Black Sea remains a key intermediate objective for Russia in this war, Moscow has a strong incentive to use any ceasefire to prepare the combat involvement of armed forces that it controls in the Transnistrian region. An optimal scenario for Russia in Moldova would be the installation in power of pro-Kremlin proxies, which have already made notable gains in the 2025 parliamentary elections.
A Political Proxy Attack
Therefore, even before any renewed Russian offensive in Ukraine, a ceasefire would allow Russia to redirect its attention and resources toward consolidating and exploiting its strategic advantages in the region. The Russian military-controlled enclave in Moldova’s Transnistrian region represents one such potential advantage. To capitalize on it, Russian planners are likely to intensify efforts to gain political control over Moldova, using local political proxies as their primary instruments.
Despite extensive media coverage highlighting the current Moldovan authorities’ supposed success in thwarting Russian attempts to hijack the 2024 presidential and, subsequently, the 2025 parliamentary elections, Russian authorities appear to have invested relatively little in the campaigns. Signals suggest that the Kremlin may have treated Moldova only as a pilot project, testing the waters. For example, the foiled 2023 Russian “insurrection plot” reportedly involved only 10 groups, totaling around 100 individuals, who aimed to provoke violence during public protests. Such a limited effort, lacking an accompanying kinetic component, seems unlikely to achieve meaningful power-transition objectives. Subsequent attempts to interfere in elections were similarly restrained, relying primarily on local Russian proxies, including the political network of fugitive oligarch Ilan Sor.
According to Moldovan authorities’ investigative efforts, Ilan Sor was behind attempts to buy votes during both the 2024 presidential and 2025 parliamentary elections, reportedly spending $39 million and over $100 million, respectively. This appears less like an operation led by Russian intelligence and more like outsourced work carried out by Sor, who was eager to curry favor with his high-level contacts in Moscow. These efforts resemble superficial attempts to support local proxies and test the Moldovan authorities’ responses and methods. In other words, Russian planners may be holding back when it comes to serious interference or intervention efforts in Moldova.
Despite these failed efforts, domestic political conditions in Moldova appear increasingly favorable to Russian indirect aggression through a major political operation. This assessment depends on the indicators selected to measure the degree of Russian penetration into Moldovan politics. The most reliable indicators of the level of Russian influence in Moldova are, arguably, related to electoral outcomes, comparing results before and after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Between 2021 and 2025, Russian proxies in the Moldovan parliament reduced the number of seats held by pro-European forces by eight, from 63 to 55. A more telling indicator, however, is the vote margin: The gap between pro-European forces and Russian proxies in parliament shrank from 291,891 votes in 2021 to 98,336 votes in 2025.2The pro-European Party of Action and Solidarity (PAS) won 792,557 votes in 2025 (resulting in 55 parliamentary seats), with the opposition parties (Democracy at Home, Patriotic Electoral Bloc of Socialists, Communists, Heart and Future of Moldova, the Alternativa bloc, and Our Party) winning a combined 694,221 votes. “2025 parliamentary elections in the Republic of Moldova,” Elections.md, accessed 6 April 2026. https://alegeri.md/w/Alegerile_parlamentare_din_2025_%C3%AEn_Republica_Moldova. In 2021, PAS won 774,753 votes (resulting in 63 seats), and the opposition parties able to gain one or more parliamentary seats (the Sor Party and the Electoral Bloc of Communists and Socialists) won a combined 482,862 votes. “2021 parliamentary elections in the Republic of Moldova,” Elections.md, accessed 6 April 2026. https://alegeri.md/w/Alegerile_parlamentare_din_2021_%C3%AEn_Republica_Moldova#Rezultatele_alegerilor.
To Russian planners, this represents a significant victory given the underlying dynamics. In the political confrontations typical of a hybrid war, the key objective is often to reduce the gap with the electoral competitor to a manageable level, since victory can be engineered through active measures and other interventions during the electoral process. An emboldened, risk-acceptant Russia, now positioned much closer to Moldova’s borders, is more likely to deploy the kind of kinetic tools that enabled it to seize control of Donbas in 2014. Current indicators, combined with the lack of effective countermeasures by Moldovan authorities, make the country an appealing “soft” target, as vulnerabilities naturally attract foreign aggression.
Mismatch of Strategy
For Moldova, negotiations over the war in Ukraine are less a question of whether its security circumstances will deteriorate, but about how and how quickly. Unfortunately, Moldova has yet to lay out a well-calibrated strategy for post-conflict scenarios. While Moldovan authorities appear to see the country’s European Union membership as the primary solution to its national security challenges, the lengthy time horizon for ascension to the bloc, along with the absence of any credible institutionalized framework for collective defense, suggests that EU membership is not a sufficient deterrent. Moreover, although an unspoken assumption persists that Ukraine will continue to keep Russian forces at bay along the Black Sea, this too depends on the course of the war, with few safeguards in place should Kyiv’s position along the corridor between Odesa and Transnistria deteriorate.
As the conflict enters a new phase and the prospect of a negotiated cessation of one kind or another becomes more likely, Moldova must confront the reality that any settlement will introduce new and serious security risks. Lacking NATO’s collective defense guarantees or alternative (bilateral or multilateral) defense assistance agreements, few countries are as exposed as Moldova in a post-conflict Ukraine scenario.
Although the country has gradually increased its defense and security investments since 2022, there has been little meaningful qualitative shift that has improved its ability to effectively safeguard its sovereignty and territorial integrity.
There are a few options available for Moldova that would entail radically changing its security policy and addressing several obvious strategic deficiencies. For instance, Moldova has not organized its citizens along a total defense model, as the Baltic states have done. Nor has it pursued bilateral or regional defense arrangements in the event of an attack, or undertaken efforts to mobilize the public in line with a “rally ‘round the flag” logic, including by seeking to loosen the constraints of neutrality. Any of these actions can signal a stronger resolve to bear costs and accept risks, thereby strengthening the country’s deterrence posture. Even so, none can substitute for membership in a defensive alliance, given the scale of the Russian threat.
Given this narrow range of policy choices and the limited time to act, an end to the fighting in Ukraine would leave Moldova facing a distinctly unfavorable security environment. In this context, Chisinau must begin having more candid and bold discussions with its public, regional partners, and international allies about how to prepare for eventual outcomes in Ukraine and the very real threats to its sovereignty that an end to the fighting is likely to trigger.
Header image: European leaders in Kyiv for the 4th anniversary of Ukraine invasion – 2026. By Dati Bendo / European Union, 2026 / EC – Audiovisual Service
Notes
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