The brightest news out of Europe since Putin started the war
SATURDAY LONG READ: A rare reason to celebrate
News is so often bad for a reason.
‘All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way,’ observed Leo Tolstoy in Anna Karenina.
Tolstoy could easily have been talking about the metrics on which the media information industry runs.
But this week, I want to depart from the usual news script of how much worse the world seems to be getting, to focus on one of the brightest developments in Europe since Vladimir Putin launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
My week began in Poland, attending the Warsaw Security Forum. The opening morning was abuzz. Overnight, the people of Moldova had done something spectacular. They defied a fierce Russian disinformation and interference campaign to back their pro-EU President Maia Sandu in national elections.
Moldova’s September 28 vote was no ordinary poll; it was essentially a referendum on whether Moldovans wanted to enter the European Union or exist in Russia’s orbit, as a puppet state, riddled with corruption and societal repressions to be used as a launchpad to continually chip away at European stability and cohesion, particularly in neighbouring Romania.
Moldova is a nation few hear about often in the international media. It is a tiny country with a population of around 2.3 million. Landlocked, it is sandwiched between Romania (a member of NATO) and Ukraine.
It was a former Soviet state and gained independence after the fall of the USSR. But it is home to the breakaway, unrecognised, Russian-controlled state of Transnistria.
Depending on which definition you use, it can rank as Europe’s poorest nation. So it is ripe for Russian interference, but this is what Moldovans defied.
Opening the Warsaw Security Conference, Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk, who governs under a powerful anti-Ukrainian populist President, said it was another example that ‘we don’t have to be huge to win.’
‘They won, once again, hugely, as you know, Moldova is in my heart frequently. I tried to support Moldovan democracy for many, many years,’ Tusk, the former president of the EU Council, told the hundreds of delegates gathered in the room.
‘In Chișinău (Moldova’s capital), we were dealing with Russian aggression, brutal influencing the elections. This is very important for all of the Western world.’
Volodymyr Zelensky, addressing the conference virtually (and without any glitches this time), said: ‘Thank God we have a pro-European result.’
‘Russia failed to destabilise Moldova, even after spending, huge, huge, resources to undermine it and to corrupt whoever they could,’ Ukraine’s President said.
‘Russia’s subversive influence will not spread farther into Europe.’
Zelensky compared the democratic wishes of Moldova to Georgia and Belarus, two states that have puppet regimes installed that do Putin’s bidding.
He said by contrast, Russia was losing its clout in two other former USSR states — his own and Moldova.
But he warned: ‘After elections, the hardest part is to meet voters’ expectations.’
Moldova’s EU journey is integral to Ukraine’s. The two countries want to join the European Union at the same time, in 2030 or even earlier.
As I have written before, the desire to join the EU in Ukraine is strongly held right across society. The blue flag bearing the gold circle of stars flies all around Ukraine as a sign of this determination.
The question now is whether or not this result can accelerate Moldova’s and Ukraine’s entry into the EU.
On Thursday, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on X that she had met Maia Sandu at the European Political Community meeting of leaders in Copenhagen to discuss ‘how we can speed up progress towards the European future that Moldovans voted for.’
President Sandu said her citizens had passed the test.
‘This was not a normal election — it was a test of democracy under attack and our citizens passed it,’ she said.
Jason Emert, an international attorney with the US law firm Jones Walker LLP and former chairman of the International Young Democracy Union, has observed past elections in Moldova.
He told Latika Takes that Europe’s own safety depended on its ability to respond with urgency.
‘The people of Moldova rejected the cruel machinations of Russian meddling and chosen a European path. This brave act should not be in vain,’ Mr Emert said.
‘The security of Europe and the future of Moldova align and the EU should seize this momentum to fast-track Moldova’s membership, because leaving them on the periphery only allows the Russian menace to regroup and fester on Europe’s doorstep.’
Lessons to learn
As the drone incursions over Poland last month exposed, the tables have been turned, and it is now time to be asking states that were beneficiaries of aid and advice to teach larger, but less equipped and experienced nations some lessons.
Moldova and Ukraine have much to offer, not just Europe, but any nation battling foreign interference and dealing with trade and energy dependencies.
International observers for the Organisation for Security and Co-operation, which monitors elections, said in a statement that Moldova’s election processes were ‘marred by serious cases of foreign interference, illicit financing, cyber-attacks and widespread disinformation.’
‘In the run-up to the elections, the authorities faced an unprecedented scale of hybrid attacks, including illicit financing, disinformation campaigns and cybersecurity incidents, identified as originating from the Russian Federation,’ the observers said.
‘An organised network, funded by foreign sources, coordinating targeted vote-buying schemes and disinformation campaigns, was credibly identified by the authorities and investigative journalists as originating from the Russian Federation.’
Moldova reported more than 1000 cyberattacks on its infrastructure in 2025.
And yet despite this, its fragile system withstood the pressure.
It is a lesson to larger states about how to tackle what seems uncontrollable — the use of bot farms to promote misinformation, create echo chambers online and on social media to overwhelm and outpace the dissemination of truth and verifiable information.
Sandu said that media coverage and exposure of the interference attempts were crucial to combating the disinformation.
This is encouraging. If a frontline state that is poor, has been on the coalface of Russian attempts to corrupt its political system and participants can defend itself, there is no reason why established democracies cannot do the same.
There is another critical piece to Moldova’s gutsy fightback — solar panels and wind farms.
In June at the GLOBSEC security conference in Prague, I moderated a fascinating panel on decarbonising the global economy.
On that panel was Moldova’s State Secretary for the Ministry of Energy, Carolina Novac.
She told me that until 2021, Moldova was dependent on Russian gas, but within four years, it had managed to increase its share of renewable energy from 3 per cent to 35 per cent, predominantly solar, followed by wind.
‘Renewables is such a fantastic story for us because, above all, it’s not just about clean energy or green energy, but it’s first and foremost about energy security,” she said.
‘We produce it in our country and it’s not dictated somewhere in the Kremlin – we have control over this resource.’
The news gets even better.
‘Surprisingly enough, now we have a situation where renewables are the cheapest source amongst all the full share of electricity share in the country,’ she said.
‘I genuinely believe we can steer an economic development through this energy transition.’
Smiling yet?
Moldova is hoping to become an exporter of renewables to Romania by 2030 – the same year it wants to be a part of the single market.
But to reach this goal, it has to continue to overcome, every single day, Russian propaganda attacking its break from Russian gas.
‘We have full disinformation from you know who, and that’s literally on a daily basis,’ she said.
‘On renewables I see this fake news that it’s expensive, that it will bring blackouts and have to face it, we have to fight it, actually,’ she said.
‘It’s a hybrid war, you have to on a daily basis, fight it back and get the arguments on board and you have to communicate people, straightforwardly and where you see hesitation to convince them.’
When I asked Novac if Moldova had ever experienced blackouts, she said the only time was when the Russians attacked Ukrainian energy infrastructure, i.e. never because of a solar overload.
Continuing on the optimistic theme of this piece, my week ended back home in London, attending a talk on Friday at the foreign affairs think tank Chatham House with Arseniy Yatsenyuk, who was the prime minister of Ukraine between 2014 and 2016.
The discussion was moderated by Orysia Lutsevych, deputy director of the Russia and Eurasia Programme and head of the Ukraine Forum.
It is her words with which I want to end this piece.
‘There’s a reason to celebrate that Moldova resolutely countered Russia interference and exposed that it’s not that Russia is so strong and powerful, it’s because previously they had free passage through electoral systems, through political corruption, through energy and if you counter that, you actually can defend your country.
‘So that is the good news of this week in Moldova.’
Celebrate for now, but learn tomorrow.
Who do you think is "winning" in Ukraine? Get such a mixed picture here in Australia. Ukrainian
attacks damaging Russian oil refineries are pitted against massive drone strikes by Putin on Ukrainian cities. Potential access to US tomahawks cruise missiles seem to be balanced by Russia turning its industrial resources largely over to weapons manufacture. Russian casualties now appear "normalised" as Putin is prepared for a decade long conflict which he bets on a decadent West will tire of? The Russian economy and public opinion seems shaky but not broken? What is your judgment on the outcome?