Moldova heads to the polls on Sunday for a second-round vote to choose between the incumbent pro-EU president, Maia Sandu, and her opponent, Aleksandr Stoianoglo, who seeks to rebuild bridges with Moscow.
Stoianoglo has rejected suggestions that he is beholden to Russia, calling for European integration while avoiding the divisions he said Sandu had created during her four-year term. Stoianoglo is backed in Sunday's run-off vote by the Socialist Party, which has traditionally been linked to Russia.
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In last Sunday's presidential debate, Sandu, whose term has seen a sharp deterioration of ties with Moscow, said Stoianoglo was a "Trojan Horse" candidate for outside interests bent on seizing control of Moldova.
But her opponent distanced himself from the accusation, telling Reuters on Tuesday that if elected to lead the ex-Soviet state, he would seek to bridge differences with Moldova's separatist Transdniestria enclave and was prepared to meet Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin if it was in the interests of a majority of his compatriots.
"I have had no contacts for years with officials in Russia,” he said. “Not by telephone, not in secret, not in meetings, not anywhere."
An ‘uphill struggle’
The vote comes after Saturday's parliamentary election in Georgia, another ex-Soviet country trying to join the EU, where a ruling party seen by many in the West as increasingly pro-Russian claimed victory in a result contested by the opposition.
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"It will be an uphill struggle (for Sandu) with internal grievances, but also external pressure and meddling," Orysia Lutsevych, deputy director of Chatham House's Russia and Eurasia program, told Reuters.
Sandu won 42% of the vote in the first round versus Stoianoglo's 26%, but claimed there was "clear evidence" that criminal groups backed by "foreign forces" had tried to bribe 300,000 voters.
However, political analysts have said that apart from the interference, the results laid bare genuine opposition to Sandu. Ruslan Rokhov, a Ukrainian political expert on Moldova and managing partner at the PGR Consulting Group LLC, told Reuters the numbers looked stacked against Sandu going into the runoff.
While she and other pro-European politicians won over 650,000 votes in the first round, 850,000 were won by Stoianoglo and candidates who either support Russia or emphasized their independence, he said. Sandu also has a much higher disapproval rating than political newcomer Stoianoglo, he said.
Sandu's term has coincided with a major economic fallout in the poor nation of under 3 million people. That includes the aftermath of COVID and Russia's invasion of neighboring Ukraine, which saw a huge influx of refugees and sharply reduced Russian gas supplies, which in turn caused high inflation.
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