In a sharp setback to the Kremlin’s ambitions to recreate a Soviet Union lite, voters in Moldova, a former Soviet republic, decisively cast their lot yesterday with Europe. Confounding pollsters who had predicted a dead heat, voters cast twice as many ballots for the pro-Western faction as for the pro-Russia group.

The choice was clear. On one side, the pro-Russia group had as its emblem a hammer and sickle superimposed on a five-pointed red star. On the other side, the pro-European group was led by President Maia Sandu, a graduate of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard and a former World Bank official. 

European leaders placed their fingers on the scales when the leaders of France, Germany, and Poland traveled to Moldova last month for photo ops with Ms. Sandu. “Moldova’s pro-European victory is a lesson for all Europe on how to defend against Russian interference,” the vice president of the European People’s Party, Siegfried Muresan, posted on X after near final results came in today. 

A member of the European parliament from neighboring Romania, he added: “Moldova remains firmly anchored on the pro-European path. Good news for the people of Moldova. Good news for Europe.” The Kremlin had invested heavily in the election. On Wednesday, Moldova’s prime minister, Dorin Recean, charged that Russia was spending hundreds of millions of euros to “take power.” He said: “There is evidence, including wiretaps, that proves that vote buying is financed by the Russian Federation.”

In addition to pursuing a return to empire, the Kremlin envisaged creating a second, Western front in its war against Ukraine. Ukraine’s 759-mile-long Western border with Moldova is almost as long as Ukraine’s 980-mile eastern border with Russia. President Volodymyr Zelensky sees Moldova as part of President Vladimir Putin’s larger plan to recreate a Russian empire.

“Georgia is dependent on Russia, and for many many years Belarus has been moving toward dependence on Russia,” Mr. Zelensky told the United Nations General Assembly last week in New York. “Europe cannot afford to lose Moldova too.”

To try to get its way, Moscow used innovative political technologies. It flew hundreds of Moldovan Orthodox priests to Russia for all-expenses-paid tours of holy sites. On their return, Reuters reports, they were given bank cards and instructions to use the money to set up social media channels to urge parishioners to vote against pro-Western parliamentary candidates. 

BBC reports that fugitive Moldovan oligarch Ilan Shor funded from Moscow a network of accomplices to post fake news, fake polls, and pro-Russian propaganda on social media sites. Bloomberg reports on documents showing that the Kremlin was recruiting Moldovans to post fake news on social media, to interfere on election day, and to protest if the pro-Russia party lost.

Above ground, Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service flooded Moldovan internet sites with “reports” that NATO forces were concentrating near the Moldovan border and that NATO was preparing a “landing” from Odessa Oblast. 

That was parried last week, when Moldovan security officials banned two small pro-Russia parties on the grounds they were illegally funded from overseas. Police conducted 250 raids, arresting 74 people on allegations of preparations for violence on election day. Police charged that dozens of Moldovan men had been flown to Serbia for training by Russian intelligence operatives in violent protest techniques. 

“This is not the first time that Russia has resorted to classic tactics of manipulation and disinformation, but today it is going much further,” a European Commission spokeswoman, Anitta Hipper, told reporters Thursday. “Moscow is deeply interfering in the electoral process.”

The Moldovan national security advisor, Stanislav Secrieru, charged that Russia was behind cyber attacks and vote-buying schemes. Yesterday, the biggest irregularities were a wave of international telephone bomb threats that temporarily paused overseas voting in Italy, Romania, Spain, and the United States. Accounting for about 7 percent of votes cast, the 1 million-strong Moldovan diaspora is heavily pro-Western. In last November’s run-off vote, President Sandu won 82 percent of the diaspora vote. 

Also influencing attitudes toward Russia, 1.9 million Ukrainians fled through Moldova after the Kremlin’s war against Ukraine started in earnest in February 2022. Today, this Maryland-sized nation still hosts 127,000 Ukrainian refugees, the highest number of Ukrainian refugees per capita in the world.

Last night, shortly after the polls closed, the leader of the pro-Russia forces, Igor Dodon, declared that he had won and that there would be a protest rally today at Chisinau, Moldova’s capital. After the 2:1 trouncing, though, it is unclear if opposition protests will have much of an echo. Ms. Sandu’s Party of Action and Solidarity seems to be on track to win an outright majority in Moldova’s 101-seat parliament.

The victory of pro-Western Sandu may revive talk of a potential re-unification of Moldova and Romania. The two countries have a shared language, Romanian, and, as recently as 1940, a shared history of existing as one country. However, according to polls, Moldovan “Unionists” do not appear to represent a majority of public opinion.

Instead, Ms. Sandu is expected to focus on joining the 27-member European Union.  Four months after Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Brussels awarded “candidate status” to Moldova. This year, Brussels announced a three-year $2.23 billion aid plan for investment in infrastructure and energy projects in Moldova. If Ms. Sandu can keep Moldova on its pro-Western course, analysts believe that it will join the EU in the 2030s.

Today the European Commission’s president, Ursula von der Leyen, posted on X: “Moldova, you’ve done it again. No attempt to sow fear or division could break your resolve. You made your choice clear: Europe. Democracy. Freedom. Our door is open. And we will stand with you every step of the way.”