Moldova’s President Maia Sandu votes in the Presidential election and EU referendum, Chisinau, October 20, 2024 (AP)

Sunday’s Coverage: France Backs Victory Plan

Map: Institute for the Study of War

UPDATE 1515 GMT:

Commenting on the narrow victory for EU membership in Moldova’s referendum, European Commission spokesperson Peter Stano said, “This vote took place under unprecedented interference and intimidation by Russia and its proxies, aiming to destabilize the democratic processes.”

He said attempts to disrupt the voting in Moldova lasted “not weeks but months”, with vote-buying and propaganda.

This is an ongoing effort from Russia and its proxies — not only in Moldova, indeed, also against our countries — and it’s a long-term fight. They don’t have boundaries.

We, as the European Union…respect certain principles, including the laws, but Russia and its actors and its proxies do not respect that.

UPDATE 1507 GMT:

The US has announced a new $400 million military assistance package for Ukraine.

US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said during his trip to Kyiv on Monday that the package will include ammunition, military equipment, and weapons.

UPDATE 1150 GMT:

At least five people have been killed and 38 injured by Russian attacks across Ukraine over the past day.

Air defenses downed 59 of 116 Iran-type attack drones launched by Russia overnight. Another 45 drones were lost because of electronic counter-measures.

Russia also attacked Ukraine with an Iskander-M or North Korean KN-23 ballistic missile, a Kh-35 guided aerial missile, and a Kh-31P guided aerial missile.

A 71-year-old man and 72-year-old woman were killed in the Kharkiv region in northeast Ukraine. One person was slain in the Sumy region in the north, and two in Zaporizhzhia in the south.

UPDATE 1138 GMT:

South Korea’s Foreign Ministry has summoned the Russian Ambassador to protest the reported deployment of thousands of North Korean troops to help Moscow in its invasion of Ukraine.

First Vice-Foreign Minister Kim Hong-kyun told Ambassador Georgy Zinoviev that the involvement of North Korean forces violated UN resolutions. Seoul demanded their immediate withdrawal.

Kim emphasized:

We condemn North Korea’s illegal military cooperation, including its dispatch of troops to Russia, in the strongest terms.

We will respond jointly with the international community by mobilizing all available means against acts that threaten our core security interests.

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said after talks with South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, “North Korea sending troops to fight alongside Russia in Ukraine would mark a significant escalation.”

Yoon added:

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the reckless military alignment between Russia and North Korea once again confirm that the security of the Indo-Pacific region and the Atlantic region are inextricably linked.

UPDATE 0523 GMT:

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has called for an international response to reports of North Korean personnel supporting Russia’s 32-month invasion:

If the world remains silent now, and if we face North Korean soldiers on the front lines as regularly as we are defending against drones, it will benefit no one in this world and will only prolong this war.

South Korea’s National Intelligence Service said on Friday that Russian warships transferred 1,500 North Korean special operation forces to the port city of Vladivostok between October 8 and 13. Citing anonymous sources, South Korean media said Pyongyang has decided to dispatch to Russia a total of 12,000 troops, formed into four brigades.

Ukraine’s head of military intelligence Kyrill Budanov said on Thursday that almost 11,000 North Korean troops are in Russia and will be “ready to fight” in Ukraine by November 1.

UPDATE 0510 GMT:

At least 12 civilians were injured in a Russian attack on Ukraine’s second city Kharkiv on Sunday night.

Seven women aged 22 to 83 and five men aged 21 to 38 were wounded by KAB-250 guided aerial bombs at around 10 p.m. local time. Some areas of the city lost electricity.

Volodymyr Tymoshko, head of the regional police, said, “KABs were ‘scattered’ around the city chaotically, which indicates not a targeted attack on military facilities, but terrorism of the local population.”

At least three people were injured, two of them moderately, in Kryvyi Rih in south-central Ukraine by Russian ballistic missiles.
Two people were hospitalized in moderate condition.

The strikes were the second within 24 hours. At least 17 people, including emergency responders, were wounded by overnight attacks early Sunday.

Air defenses destroyed around 12 Russian drones attacking Kyiv, during an air alert that lasted more than five hours. There was minor damage to residential buildings from falling debris.

ORIGINAL ENTRY: Voters in Moldova have defied Russia’s subversion and interference to narrowly support membership in the European Union.

President Maia Sandu, a supporter of neighbor Ukraine’s resistance against Russian invasion, has a clear lead in the first-round ballot with around 42% of the vote. She will face Alexandr Stoianoglo, a former prosecutor backed by the pro-Russian Socialists, in the second round.

With 99.5% of 1.4 million ballots counted, 50.42% of Moldovans voted Yes. Results are still being tallied among the large Moldovan diaspora, most of whom favor EU accession.

Speaking on Sunday night, Sandu noted, “Moldova has faced an unprecedented assault on our country’s freedom and democracy, both today and in recent months”.

The President explained that “criminal groups” had tried to “undermine a democratic process”. She cited “clear evidence” that 300,000 votes were bought in “a fraud of unprecedented scale”.

“We are waiting for the final results, and we will respond with firm decisions,” said the former World Bank advisor, who was first elected President in November 2020 on a pro-European and anti-corruption platform.

In one incident, a BBC producer heard a woman who had just dropped her ballot into a transparent box ask an election monitor where she would get paid.

Asked by the BBC if she had been offered cash, she said yes and fumed that a man who had sent her to the polling station was no longer answering her calls: “He tricked me!”

Moldova and neighboring Ukraine applied for EU membership in March 2022, weeks after Russia’s full invasion of the latter. Both were granted candidate status in June 2022.

The Kremlin’s “Unprecedented, Direct Attack”

The Moldovan Government estimates that Russia put at least €100 million into Moldova to spur protests and manipulate votes. Passengers arriving from Russia via countries such as Armenia carried almost €10,000 in bundles of cash, just short of the threshold for mandatory declaration.

Russia, which has occupied the Transnistria region of Moldova since 1992, has stepped up its subversion since the full invasion of Ukraine. It supports Moldovan politician Ilan Shor, who lives in Moscow and who is under international sanctions.

Shor was sentenced to 15 years in prison last year in absentia over his role in the disappearance of $1 billion from Moldova’s banking system. He fled to Israel and then Moscow where he set up his Kremlin-backed political movement.

Earlier this month, Moldovan police chief Viorel Cernăuțanu said the Kremlin and Shor had established a “mafia-style” voter-buying scheme with bribery of 130,000 Moldovans, almost 10% of normal voter turnout in the country of 2.5 million, in an “unprecedented, direct attack”.

Shor sent elderly Moldovans “top-ups” to their monthly pension, using a sanctioned Russian State bank and Russian-issued credit cards outlawed in Moldova.

Shor announced that all Moldovan pensioners could receive this extra cash if they voted “No” in Sunday’s refernedum.

“I need your co-operation, my friends. No EU!” he said on social media.