Eastern Europe Russian Election Interference Tactics Exposed

Russ­ian elec­tion inter­fer­ence tac­tics are trans­form­ing East­ern Euro­pean pol­i­tics amid crit­i­cal elec­tions in Roma­nia, Moldo­va, and Geor­gia. On 15 April 2025, Dai­ly Sabah report­ed that Roma­nia, Moldo­va, and Geor­gia are expe­ri­enc­ing vary­ing degrees of Russ­ian influ­ence oper­a­tions dur­ing recent elec­tions, with dif­fer­ent out­comes based on their NATO and EU rela­tion­ships. The arti­cle begins:

Roma­nia, Moldo­va and Geor­gia walk a tightrope between West­ern inte­gra­tion and Russ­ian influ­ence. Rela­tions between the Unit­ed States and the Russ­ian Fed­er­a­tion have fluc­tu­at­ed since the Cold War, with ten­sions esca­lat­ing in recent years due to the Ukraine cri­sis, cyber­se­cu­ri­ty issues, and region­al influ­ence strug­gles. As of April 2025, the dynam­ics between these glob­al pow­ers hold sig­nif­i­cant impli­ca­tions for East­ern Europe and Black Sea coun­tries, such as Roma­nia, Geor­gia and Moldo­va. These coun­tries, whose geopo­lit­i­cal posi­tions have fos­tered com­plex rela­tion­ships with the Russ­ian Fed­er­a­tion, gained inde­pen­dence and embarked on dis­tinct paths with­in the inter­na­tion­al sys­tem fol­low­ing the dis­so­lu­tion of the Sovi­et Union. How­ev­er, Rus­si­a’s per­sis­tent efforts to main­tain and expand its region­al influ­ence have pro­found­ly shaped their domes­tic pol­i­tics and for­eign relations.

Read more: https://www.dailysabah.com/opinion/op-ed/romania-moldova-georgia-attitudes-toward-russia-us-before-and-after-elections

Key Points

• Roma­ni­a’s Con­sti­tu­tion­al Court annulled the 2024 elec­tion results after evi­dence emerged of Russ­ian-backed social media manip­u­la­tion sup­port­ing far-right can­di­date Călin Georgescu.
• Moldova’s Pres­i­dent Maia San­du won reelec­tion with a nar­row EU ref­er­en­dum vic­to­ry of 50.46%, despite alleged Russ­ian vot­er bribery and anti-ref­er­en­dum campaigns.
• Geor­gia’s rul­ing Geor­gian Dream par­ty main­tains eco­nom­ic ties with Rus­sia while fac­ing crit­i­cism over the pass­ing of a Rus­sia-backed “for­eign agents” law.
• U.S. mil­i­tary pres­ence in Roma­nia expand­ed in March 2025, while Moldo­va received new aid for infra­struc­ture and cyber­se­cu­ri­ty to counter Russ­ian influence.

Russian Election Interference Tactics in Eastern Europe

Russia’s mul­ti­fac­eted cam­paign to under­mine demo­c­ra­t­ic process­es in East­ern Europe has inten­si­fied, tar­get­ing pres­i­den­tial elec­tions through coor­di­nat­ed dis­in­for­ma­tion, illic­it financ­ing, and dig­i­tal manip­u­la­tion. Accord­ing to GIOR research and sup­ple­men­tal sources:

• In Moldo­va, author­i­ties accused Russ­ian actors of spend­ing €200 mil­lion to influ­ence the 2025 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, prompt­ing UK sanc­tions against a pro-Russ­ian net­work impli­cat­ed in ref­er­en­dum bribery.
• In Roma­nia, intel­li­gence ser­vices uncov­ered a mas­sive Tik­Tok-based inter­fer­ence oper­a­tion that ele­vat­ed a far-right can­di­date through coor­di­nat­ed social media influ­ence and for­eign fund­ing. Roman­ian offi­cials empha­sized that TikTok’s algo­rithm dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly ampli­fied far-right and pro-Russ­ian mes­sag­ing, a pat­tern cor­rob­o­rat­ed by inde­pen­dent inves­ti­ga­tions. EU offi­cials have launched inquiries into whether plat­form algo­rithms and data han­dling prac­tices con­tributed to the spread of for­eign influence.
• In Poland, offi­cials warned of Russ­ian hybrid threats tar­get­ing the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, point­ing to coor­di­nat­ed dig­i­tal influ­ence operations.

Col­lec­tive­ly, these efforts are part of a broad­er Krem­lin strat­e­gy to desta­bi­lize pro-Euro­pean gov­er­nance and reshape pub­lic sen­ti­ment through a blend of dig­i­tal sub­ver­sion and polit­i­cal infil­tra­tion, as illus­trat­ed in a com­pre­hen­sive GIOR analy­sis on East­ern Euro­pean elec­tions. Germany’s domes­tic intel­li­gence agency sim­i­lar­ly report­ed a surge in Krem­lin-backed dis­in­for­ma­tion cam­paigns, not­ing that Russ­ian oper­a­tions are evolv­ing to use local actors and mul­ti­lin­gual con­tent, mak­ing detec­tion more dif­fi­cult. These find­ings under­score the increas­ing sophis­ti­ca­tion and plat­form-spe­cif­ic tar­get­ing in Russia’s elec­tion inter­fer­ence playbook.

Exter­nal References

1. Rus­sia Accused of Dirty Tricks to Dash Moldova’s EU Mem­ber­ship Hopes

2. Russ­ian Inter­fer­ence: Com­ing Soon to an Elec­tion Near You

3. Romania’s can­celled elec­tion is a les­son in social media manipulation

4. Tik­Tok push­es far-right can­di­date con­tent in Roman­ian elec­tion, Glob­al Wit­ness inves­ti­ga­tion shows

5. EU opens inves­ti­ga­tion into Tik­Tok over elec­tion interference

Dis­claimer:

The Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) employs AI through­out the post­ing process, includ­ing gen­er­at­ing sum­maries of news items, the intro­duc­tion, key points, and often the “con­text” sec­tion. We rec­om­mend ver­i­fy­ing all infor­ma­tion before use. Addi­tion­al­ly, images are AI-gen­er­at­ed and intend­ed sole­ly for illus­tra­tive pur­pos­es. While they rep­re­sent the events or indi­vid­u­als dis­cussed, they should not be inter­pret­ed as real-world photography.