Moldova: The EU frontrunner outrunning Russia

Moldova is often held up as an EU enlargement success story. Beneath the reform headlines lies a country shaped by decades of economic pressure, Russian interference—and politics driven as much by survival as ideology.

Jessica Hendrick speaks with Dumitru Alaiba, Moldova’s former deputy prime minister and minister of economic development and digitalisation, and Maia Machavariani, director of programmes at the Eastern European Centre for Multiparty Democracy working on the RE-ENGAGE project. Alaiba argues that Moldova is proof that “Russia can lose” after its repeated failed attempts to derail the country’s European trajectory. At the same time, RE-ENGAGE research reveals a gap: Moldovans still trust informal networks more than the state itself.

Drawing on this, and Alaiba’s experience governing through war, energy blackmail, inflation and political destabilisation, Jessica, Maia and Dumitru discuss Moldova’s “final divorce from Moscow”, the stakes behind this weekend’s local election and what Moldova’s chairing of the Council of Europe reveals about Europe’s wider battle against disinformation and democratic backsliding.

Why did Russia fail to derail Moldova’s recent election? What happens when citizens trust personal networks more than state institutions? And can EU-backed reforms build long-term democratic resilience in the country?