What do Orthodox priests, training camps, and vote-buying all have in common? Kremlin money | NYT

A recent investigative article by The New York Times reports how in Moldova, Moscow paid Orthodox priests, set up training camps on election interference, and orchestrated a vote-buying scheme in an effort to derail the country’s government in the lead-up to its pivotal parliamentary elections last year. 

The context 

Moldova represents a strategic target for Moscow. It is a non-NATO Western-leaning neighbor of Ukraine with a Russian-backed breakaway region, where Russian troops are stationed. The outcome of last September’s parliamentary elections in the country were regarded as determinants of Moldova’s path to the E.U.; the pro-democracy president Maia Sandu, who won her own re-election against a Kremlin-backed candidate in 2024, called it the country’s most consequential election in its history. 

That’s the context for the Kremlins extensive and continuing attempts to subvert the vote and whip up support for Russia in Moldova. Michael Schwirtz, Adam Goldman and Aaron Kroli’s reporting is based on “interviews with activists who took part in the [2025] Russian effort; senior Moldovan law enforcement and security officials; and more than half a dozen European and American intelligence officials,” as well as “thousands of documents related to Russia’s attempts to interfere in Moldova’s elections.”

Here’s what to know: 

“Russian agents ran training programs in Bosnia and Moscow that were designed to turn pro-Russian Moldovans into foot soldiers. Moscow paid hundreds of Orthodox Moldovan priests to recruit voters and to push Russian narratives from the pulpit. And it spent hundreds of millions of dollars on a sophisticated vote-buying scheme financed by a Moldovan billionaire in exile and conceived and operated from Skolkovo, the Kremlin’s knockoff Silicon Valley outside Moscow.”

And that effort hasn’t stopped. In public, the Kremlin has denied any involvement in Moldovan affairs. Putin has denied trying to subvert the West at all. But his words to Russian leaders say otherwise. In an address to military commanders last December, he blamed European leaders for “stoking hysteria” about Russia– but then outlined his objective of masterminding the “the collapse of NATO and the E.U. from within” in 2026 in a secret briefing soon afterward. 

What we learn

This story tells us what readers of the Discourse already know: that Russia interferes in European domestic politics. But it also tells us more. Russian subversion extends to misinformation promulgated through the Orthodox church and actual training and preparation for domestic unrest and violence, let alone extensive vote-buying. All that costs a huge amount of money. Even as Russia strains its coffers in its continuation of its war in Ukraine, it still finds a way to inject dark money into NATO and the EU’s soft Moldovan underbelly. 

Here’s the original NYT article: “Inside Russia’s Giant Push to Upend a Tiny Country.”

While you’re here… 

It’s not all bad. Check out this article by Dr. Marius Ghincea and Dr. Laurențiu Pleșca on Moldova’s opportunity with regard to Transnistria: “Dismantling Transnistria’s Self-Declared Statehood: Structural Decay as Strategic Opportunity.”