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Police in Moldova say they have foiled a plot by a group of Russian-backed actors trained to cause mass unrest during Sunday’s protests against the country’s new pro-Western government.
Moldova’s police chief, Viorel Cernauteanu, said at a press conference that undercover agents had infiltrated a group of “diversionists,” including several Russian citizens. He was promised US$10,000 to organize “mass disturbances” during protests in the capital, Chisinau, he added. Seven people were arrested.
Separately, police said they arrested 54 protesters, including 21 minors, who exhibited “questionable behavior” or were found to be carrying prohibited items, including at least one knife.
Sunday’s protest was one of several held in recent weeks organized by a group called Movement for the People, which is backed by Moldova’s Russia-friendly Shor Party, which holds six seats in the country’s 101-seat legislature.
Protesters are demanding that the government cover the cost of winter energy bills and “stay out of the war.” He has repeatedly called on President Maia Sandu to resign.
Police said four bomb threats on Sunday, including one at the capital’s international airport, had been registered, in what they called “part of destabilizing measures” against Moldova, a former Soviet republic with a population of about 2.6 million.
Moldovan border police also said on Sunday that 182 foreigners had been denied entry to Moldova in the past week, including “potential representatives” of Russia’s Wagner Group, a private military company fighting in Ukraine, Moldova’s war-torn neighbour.
Sunday’s police announcement comes just days after US intelligence officials said actors linked to Russian intelligence planned to use protests in Moldova, a candidate for the European Union since last June, as a basis to support an uprising against the country’s government.
Money is stuffed in an envelope
On Saturday, Moldova’s national anti-corruption agency said it had seized more than 220,000 euros ($323,800 Cdn) in an investigation into the alleged illegal financing of the Shor Party by an organized criminal group.
The agency said that a search of the car of the “courier” for the Shor Party found money placed in envelopes and bags in various currencies, and was assigned to “pay for transportation and pay the remuneration of people who came to the protests organized by the party.”
The leader of the Shor Party, Ilan Shor, is a Moldovan oligarch currently in exile in Israel. Shor was named on the US State Department sanctions list as working for Russian interests. Britain also added Shor to its sanctions list in December.
Moldova’s Interior Minister, Ana Revenco, said the protests “aim to shake the country’s democracy and stability” and that “the voice of the people does not mean violence and betrayal of the state.”
“I warn the traitors of our country that they will be brought to justice immediately, regardless of the money and assistance they receive to destroy our country,” Revenco said in a Facebook post.
Cristian Cantir, a professor of international relations of Moldova at Oakland University, said that it is difficult to determine how the alleged plan to overthrow the government of Moldova, “Russia is always trying to destroy the pro-European government.”
“I think the concerns are valid, it is difficult to say what the nature of the threat is and how dangerous some of these groups may be,” he told The Associated Press, “but it is a realistic concern.”
Shor’s party also organized several anti-government protests last fall, when the Moldovan government asked the country’s Constitutional Court to declare Shor’s party illegal, in an ongoing case. At the same time, anti-corruption prosecutors also stated that the protests were partially financed with Russian money.
Last week, authorities in Moldova’s breakaway region of Transnistria, which has close ties to Moscow and hosts Russian troops, claimed to have thwarted an assassination attempt allegedly orchestrated by Ukraine’s national security service, the SBU, but offered no evidence.
The SBU denied the allegations, saying they “should be considered exclusively a provocation orchestrated by the Kremlin.”
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