Presidency of the Republic of Moldova
Dear guests,
Ladies and gentlemen,
This forum asks whether a small country can be a security provider. A few years ago, few would have asked that question about Moldova. Today the answer is yes, and allow me to tell you why.
I have three points.
First, Moldova already contributes to Europe's security, and the contribution begins with Ukraine.
Second, Moldova stands where Russia tries its methods first: in the air, in our elections and in our information space. What we have learned can save our partners time.
Third, what strengthens Moldova strengthens Europe, and the strongest guarantee is membership of the European Union.
In the wars of our time, a country's choices count for more than its size. Every state has a share of Europe's security to carry. Moldova's share begins with 1,200 kilometres of border with Ukraine.
Ukraine has almost 7,000 kilometres of international borders. Close to 3,000 of them, with Russia and Belarus, are hostile. Ours is the longest stretch Ukraine shares with a friendly state. Because Moldova stands on the right side of history, Ukraine can keep its forces where the war is fought, in the east.
A Moldova in Moscow's hands would turn more than half of Ukraine's borders hostile. It would leave Ukraine exposed from the south-west, pull its troops away from the front, and bring Russian pressure to the Prut river, which is the border of the European Union and NATO.
This was Russia's plan. It wanted to make Moldova a second Belarus and use our territory against Ukraine and against the EU. Moldovans stopped that plan at the ballot box, twice.
So when we speak about Moldova's contribution to European security, we start with Ukraine.
More than a million Ukrainians fleeing the war have crossed into Moldova since 2022, and some 100,000 found a home here. If this winter in Ukraine proves as hard as everyone expects, we are ready to welcome as many as need to be in safety.
When Russia blocked the Black Sea routes, in 2023 and again this year, Moldova offered its railways and roads for Ukraine's exports. Gas for Ukraine can flow across our territory through the Vertical Corridor. For both grain and gas, we lowered the transit fees, because Ukraine's resilience is our security too. We have kept the peace in the Transnistrian region and kept Russia's war from spreading further.
We are a member of the Coalition of the Willing. We work for accountability: during Moldova's presidency of the Council of Europe, work on the Special Tribunal for the Crime of Aggression against Ukraine was completed here, in Chișinău. And while Russian trade found new routes through some countries, our government has not allowed Moldova to become a route for evading sanctions or a source of revenue for Russia's war.
That is Moldova's contribution.
My second point is what we face, and what we have learned. And what we face is a war that comes dangerously closer, and a hybrid war that never pauses.
In the past 7 days alone, 9 Russian drones have violated our airspace. In September there were more than 20, more than in the whole of last year. Russian drones struck the crossing points on our border with Ukraine, one of them, by Russia's own admission, on purpose, killing 2 people who were trying to cross into Moldova.
This Monday, debris hit a bus, also at a border crossing point, and wounded a border guard. Earlier this year, Russian strikes on Ukrainian infrastructure polluted the Nistru river and left 300,000 Moldovans without safe water for a week. And one of the Russian strikes damaged the power line that at times carries two thirds of our electricity.
This is how the war reaches Moldova: through the air, through the water, through the grid.
Ladies and gentlemen,
Every drone and every missile comes with information manipulation attached.
Within hours of each incursion, anonymous Telegram channels tell Moldovans that the danger comes from helping Ukraine, and that our army is preparing for someone else's war. Russia sends a drone, then blames those who stand with the victim.
This is reversal of responsibility, a classic method of manipulation. Its aim is to frighten our citizens, turn them against their own institutions, and wear down their support for Ukraine and for our own defence.
This is cognitive war. Its target is the mind of our citizens.
Here is a recent example. Last week, Norway decided to extend its support for Moldova to defence equipment, services and training. Norway already helps us with humanitarian aid, energy security, and other types of support. Within days, a wave of manipulation followed. The announcement was reduced to two words, "military equipment", and presented as Moldova being used for war.
Anonymous channels pushed the claim, algorithms spread it, and Moscow's local voices repeated it in parliament and on television. The whole operation played on a real fear: that Moldova could be dragged into war.
The intensity of the attack shows its purpose. Moscow wants to discredit our defence partnerships and lower public support for a modern army. A weak army suits Moscow on the day defence becomes necessary.
Russian information manipulation is nothing new.
Take Cobasna, the Soviet-era depot in the Transnistrian region that holds munitions pulled back from across the former Warsaw Pact. For decades, Moldovans have been told it could explode with catastrophic force across the whole region. This year our experts tested the claim with blast modelling, engineering calculations, the layout of the depot and the terrain around it.
Of the roughly 14,000 tonnes stored there, about 20 percent are explosives, spread across separate facilities. A catastrophic regional explosion cannot occur under any realistic scenario. The myth has a political function. Russian troops have guarded the depot since 1992 and promised to leave in 1999. They are still there, and the fear of Cobasna is used to justify their staying. Dismantling such myths is part of how we build our resilience.
Ladies and gentlemen,
Moldova has become a laboratory for Russian electoral interference.
Next year, citizens in several EU countries will vote. The methods tested on Moldova are ready for them. In two election cycles, we saw the whole toolbox:
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a sanctioned Russian bank opening some 140,000 accounts to bribe Moldovan voters;
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cash couriers through our airport, over a million euros intercepted in a single day;
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illegal money moved into cryptocurrency once the banks were closed to it;
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troll farms and fake news sites in three languages;
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priests used as vectors of information manipulation;
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young people trained abroad for violent unrest;
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fake bomb alerts at polling stations across Europe on election day;
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sophisticated cyber attacks with close to a billion malicious requests against our electoral infrastructure, aimed at taking the system down on election day.
Last year alone, Russia spent close to 2 percent of our GDP on this. Our institutions held, and the majority of Moldovans voted for Europe.
In Moldova, Russia's interference was open and brutal. Elsewhere, it will be more subtle. It will back politicians who may look mainstream and reveal their loyalties later. It will run campaigns that never mention Russia and instead erode support for Ukraine, for defence spending, for investment in renewables, for the state, and the trust citizens have in each other. When voters are asked why they should pay for someone else's defence, the question is a fair one. But the chances are high that it was written in Moscow.
Moldova has lived with these methods for several years now. We share what we learned with our partners.
During our presidency of the Council of Europe, we argued for a framework convention on foreign information manipulation and interference, so that democracies share one understanding of the threat and defend themselves while keeping their values. In hybrid war, time is the decisive resource, and I hope our experience gives partners time.
It is worth knowing who ran these operations here in Moldova.
Ilan Shor, sentenced in absentia to 15 years in prison for orchestrating in 2014 the theft of one billion dollars from Moldovan banks. He fled to Israel and now lives in Moscow, under the Kremlin's protection.
From exile, he bought elections in Gagauzia in 2023. He ran the interference campaign against our EU referendum, our presidential election in 2024 and then against our parliamentary elections in 2025. And once our elections were over, his network found new work.
The criminals recruited to destabilise Moldova were redirected to assassinate Ukrainians central to their country's resilience: a prominent journalist, the head of a strategic state enterprise, intelligence officers. Our police, investigating the Shor network, uncovered the plot, joined forces with Ukrainian partners, and arrested 11 people, 4 in Moldova and 7 in Ukraine.
Shor failed in Moldova in two election cycles, yet he has still proved very useful to Putin. Last week, the United States Treasury designated his A7 network a significant transnational criminal organisation. We welcome this designation. Reading how fast A7 produces front companies, one after another, in dozens of countries, we recognised the method.
When our Constitutional Court banned his party in 2023, he had a clone party registered within days, then another, then another, and bundled them into a bloc at a congress in Moscow. Companies or parties, the business model is the same.
Having seen what Shor is capable of, I thought nothing about him could still surprise me. Yet it did: according to the United States Treasury, his network also helped Iran evade sanctions and laundered money stolen by North Korean hackers.
This is the scale of what Moldova is up against. It is why our institutions, our defence and our partnerships had to grow at the same pace as the threat. And when crime crosses borders, so must the response to it. So what have we done about it? That is my third point.
Dear friends,
Last year our police and border guards exchanged more than 11,000 secure messages with EU counterparts on joint operations against cross-border crime, from firearms and drugs to cybercrime and money laundering. Cross-border crime grows in wartime and Russia uses it for intelligence and sabotage, so our border is a filter for Europe, and we keep it tight.
With the support of our partners, we have begun modernisation of our security and defence sector. We showed the results on our 35th Independence Day, when more than 2,000 men and women in uniform marched in our largest parade in years: not only the National Army, but police, intelligence officers, firefighters, prison guards and the state guard, because security is the work of the whole sector.
We wanted our citizens to see what their investment and our partners' support had bought, and we wanted our partners to see it too. Flag groups from Romania, Ukraine, Germany, Lithuania, Italy, Poland, France, the Czech Republic and the United States marched with us. Modern equipment means we can act together with our friends and partners.
Our biggest priority now is air defence. Since 2021, the European Peace Facility has been the backbone of this effort, and Moldova is its second-largest beneficiary after Ukraine. We are very grateful for this support.
We also see the limits. Innovation cycles for drones and counter-drone systems are now measured in months, and offensive technology moves faster than the defences against it. Much of what we need is simply not on the shelf; when it is, every country in Europe is queuing for it, and a small customer rarely stands at the front.
Procurement rules written for peacetime take time, and time is what the drones do not give us. Artificial intelligence changes the whole picture at once: information manipulation, cyberattacks, and the drones themselves. Keeping pace requires common rules, joint projects and pooled resources. For Moldova, membership of the European Union is the natural platform for all three.
A stronger Moldova gives back: on our border with Ukraine, on the eastern flank of the European Union and NATO, and well beyond.
Our forces have served in Kosovo since 2014, over 25 rotations, and since 2024 our carabinieri have served alongside them. We joined the peacekeeping mission in Lebanon in 2022 and the mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 2024. Moldovan officers have served in European Union missions from Mali to Somalia. For armed forces of around 6,000 people, this is a sustained national effort. And for four summers in a row, Moldovan firefighters have gone to Greece to fight wildfires.
Distinguished audience,
Ultimately, our resilience rests on people, and on their confidence that all this effort – despite the security threats, despite very high energy prices, despite an economy strained by the war next door – leads to membership of the European Union.
We are doing our part: we voted for Europe twice under the heaviest pressure this country has known, we carry the energy shock, and we keep building the institutions that will take us into the European Union.
We went from full dependence on Russian gas to zero. We are reforming at speed, and meeting every condition on merit. Progress at home must be matched by progress in the accession process. Uncertainty is the opening our adversaries look for.
In many areas of security, Moldova already acts as a member state. A Moldova inside the Union will further strengthen Europe's eastern border and secure Ukraine's south-western flank. A Moldova left in a grey zone gives Russia a permanent lever against both.
Russia has tested our resilience in elections. It keeps testing us with drones, missiles and lies. Each time, Moldova has held. And many of you in this room helped us. But a small country on the edge of Europe can only hold the line for so long without the protection of a larger family. Moldova is a security provider today. Inside the European family, we will be a stronger one.
Thank you for your interest and for your support.
