The notorious Romanian senator Diana Șoșoacă, who recently proposed attacking Ukraine and annexing “historical Romanian lands”, has come up with another scandalous initiative. Șoșoacă proposed that the Romanian parliament urgently consider the initiative to unite Moldova and Romania.
The idea of “Unirea”, which explains the merger of the two countries, is, on the one hand, quite popular on both sides of the river Prut. At the same time, it remains a key propaganda motif for intimidating the population of Moldova’s pro-Russian territories, such as Transnistria and Gagauzia.
Local politics there is built based on demonizing Romania. Under the current circumstances, this idea, voiced by an odious Romanian politician, is another propaganda operation by the Kremlin.
Moldovan context
The Republic of Moldova is entering a challenging electoral period, which begins with the elections of the Bashkan (the highest official in the Republic) of Gagauzia on 30 April. This will be followed by local elections throughout the republic this autumn, and parliamentary and presidential campaigns in successive years. The fact that such young democracies in transition as Moldova are highly sensitive to external influences is not worth explaining.
But it is interesting and useful to study how Russia is trying to take into its orbit all possible spheres of domestic politics on the example of its neighbors because the “methodology” is the same, but the local peculiarities are different.
In the current environment, effective propaganda at the regional level (from information campaigns to paid rallies and various measures of influence) comes, at least in this way, from two women politicians: the already mentioned Romanian senator Diana Șoșoacă and one of the leaders of the pro-Russian party SOR in Moldova, Marina Tauber.
Marina Tauber is in Moldova, unlike the party’s leader, Ilan Shor, who is hiding from the investigation in Israel. The politician leads the crowd during an anti-government protest.
Marina Tauber is known, among other things, for anti-government rallies in Moldova, which Western intelligence claims are a special operation by Russian special services. Moldovan MP Marina Tauber is the leader of the pro-Russian SOR party in Moldova, as its leader, Ilan Shor, is in hiding in Israel. He is accused of corruption. Therefore, Tauber is in charge of all party affairs “on the spot”, including protests.
However, according to Romanian media reports, Ms. Șoșoacă is most likely also working out the Russian “methodology”. What is certain is that Șoșoacă is a close friend of the Russian ambassador to Romania, Valeriy Kuzmin, which is already an eloquent fact.
Diana Șoșoacă, next to her in uniform, Russian Ambassador to Romania Valeriy Kuzmin during a reception to mark the Day of the Russian Diplomat.
For example, Diana Șoșoacă was one of the guests at a reception at the Russian embassy on the occasion of the Russian diplomat’s day, where an exhibition was held at the same time, dedicated to the so-called “special military operation” in Ukraine, i.e. the war crimes of the Russian invaders in Ukraine. The Russians are proud of them and invite their agents of influence like Ms. Șoșoacă to share this “pride”.
With Marina Tauber, it’s easier, her task is to mobilize anti-government sentiment and shift the focus of public opinion from external security threats emanating from Russia to social issues, and to blame the Maia Sandu government for the worsening economic crisis. To make citizens, i.e. voters, believe that domestic policy is more important even if they are occasionally hit by missiles.
Because the Republic of Moldova, although not to the same extent as Ukraine, has experienced the consequences of power outages as a result of Russian shelling, and missile fragments have landed several times in the regions bordering Ukraine.
It would seem that these two individuals, Tauber and Șoșoacă, are in different countries and do not even interact with each other, but the space, time, methods, and political circumstances in which everything happens suggest that the actions of both ladies are coordinated and synchronized.
