Sorin Ioniță and Eto Buziashvili on the Pivotal Elections in Moldova and Georgia
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Welcome back. I'm Max Bergman, director of the Stuart Center and Europe-Russia-Eurasia program at CSIS. And I'm Maria Snegovaya, senior fellow for Russia and Eurasia. And you're listening to Russian Roulette, a podcast discussing all things Russia and Eurasia from the Center for Strategic International Studies.

Hello, everyone, and welcome back. In this week's episode, we'll be discussing the recent round of elections in both Moldova and Georgia and the potentially concerning direction of their results. To discuss these recent events and their important implications, we have two really outstanding guests. We have Sorin Iannita, who's an expert in public administration reform and development and has consulted for the European Commission, the Council of Europe, the World Bank, and the United Nations Development Program on Eastern Europe and the Balkans.

And joining us from Tbilisi, Georgia, we have Eto'o Buziasvili. Eto'o has been with us before. Eto'o, thanks so much for coming back. She's a researcher with Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab, who has been examining Russia's influence operations around the world, including in Moldova and Georgia. And her apartment was recently raided, and her technology and all her electronics were recently seized by the Georgian authorities in the run-up to this election. And so she's taken great lengths to be with us, and we really appreciate it. Soren, Eto', thank you so much for joining us.

So maybe let's start, Sorin, with the elections in Moldova. Why don't you sort of set the scene for our listeners? Can you give us a rundown on the recent round of voting, both the presidential election and the EU referendum? What was at stake and what happened? It was a pretty dramatic election, it turned out.

It was more dramatic than expected. So what happened is that there were presidential elections in two rounds. So this weekend is going to be the second round. But sometime in the spring, the president, Maya Sandu, decided to organize a referendum for EU accession.

together with the first round of presidential elections, and this referendum had constitutional powers. It was not just for consultation with the people, but automatically to translate into a modification of the constitution, because as you know, as a EU member, you have to have this clause that EU treaties and legislation supersede national legislation. So everybody did it at some point. Moldova decided to do it now.

And of course, it was also political. They thought that there would be some synergy between presidential elections and the referendum.

And here the surprises started because everybody was fearing that they wouldn't make the threshold. The legal threshold for validating the referendum was one third of the electoral list. But here the complication starts because the electoral list is very long in Moldova, 2.7 million, while about 1 million city voters are not present physically in the country. So they are basically in the diaspora.

mostly in Western Europe, right? So this is a huge number. And in diaspora, you tend to vote less. No matter how hard you try, there are, you know, logistical obstacles to come to a consulate to vote. And nobody knows in advance how many they will come, but usually they vote one third or one fifth of the people on the list in diaspora is able to vote, while more than one half vote of those who are present in the country. So there is an imbalance here.

And also because the diaspora tends to be the most professionally mobile, active age and pro-European population. So the European Moldova, so to speak, is already present physically in Western Europe and tends to vote less in no matter what elections. And this is why many people feared that they wouldn't make the threshold to validate the referendum, 36%.

Which, if you take the numbers to the population physically present, would have meant something like 55-60% of participation. Whether they vote yes or no for Europe or against Europe, it was not so much of a discussion before because the opinion polls showed that the population tended

Even that present in the country tended to be about 55-60% for Europe. So everybody was fearing, you know, the presence, the validation of the referendum. If it didn't happen, it would have been a major political blow for the regime, for the European accession of Moldova, you know.

And not so much for the results of the presidential elections, because Maya Sandu, the current president, pro-European and leader of the party, which has 60% in the parliament, so it's a dominating party, is pro-European. She was a favorite in the opinion polls.

Now, we can probably discuss a bit later what happened, but I will draw your attention to this unique situation of Moldova, this big diaspora, because if you look at the United States, for example, you have 160 million voters now in these elections. It is like 60 million voters would be abroad. You never know how many exactly where, and we will discuss a little bit later about the

10% of the vote, so 16 million were stolen. So try to imagine how to organize and to fight such a campaign against such odds actually and in such an environment of uncertainty.

Now, maybe just to follow up, the outcome of the election, at least the EU referendum, was 50.46. So just got over the 50% threshold. Less than 1%. Yeah, less than 1%. And the pro-Western president, Maya Sandu, got 42% of the vote in the initial round. Now, she didn't get

to 50%, so we're going to have a second round of voting. And she alleged that there was significant Russian interference in the election. Maybe you could unpack that a bit, how significant you think the Russian interference was in this election. Now, this is true, and it was not exactly a surprise as a phenomenon, because they knew it before. There has been interference all along in the last years, including in the last elections. What was a big surprise was the magnitude and the channels, actually, because on the one hand, of course, you have online propaganda

There are these social fractures. A lot of population is caught into the Ruskimir propaganda. They watch Russian TVs. It has been limited gradually in the last years, but not completely. What was shocking was the amount of, if you want, kinetical intervention. So intervention with money from abroad, with hierarchical networks of people organized by RION, by Kvartal, right? Coordinated by WhatsApp and Telegram channels.

and paid with money, with rubles from abroad. So this is Kremlin money and the whole scheme was organized by a fugitive oligarch, Ilan Shor, who is convicted in Moldova, so he fled justice actually. He used to be in Israel, now he's in Russia.

And obviously the money were coming from there in a very roundabout way, but basically from the big state bank in Russia that is financing also the war through some cards which were distributed to the citizens and they can withdraw money in Transnistria, in the separatist territory.

But the scheme was so effective, we never imagined, until about a week before the referendum, the pro-Kremlin camp, because there are many parties and actors, was somewhat split. Some said, boycott the referendum, that was the instruction for their followers, and the other half said, no, come and vote no. Now, in the last three days, Ilan Shor, through his network, managed to align everything to the option, come and vote no.

No. And this is why the turnout in the referendum was much higher than expected. So I told you we were fearing they would buzz the threshold. Actually, it was more than 50% participation. It was totally unexpected. But this is because, as I said, about 10-12% of the votes were manipulated in this way, so in a physical way if you want, having nothing to do with propaganda, social media, TVs, and that was on top.

It's probably not 300,000, as the authorities said. Yesterday they came back with the idea that was a target of Ilan Shore, 300,000. But the realistic estimate is somewhere between 100,000 and 200,000, which is a lot for a country like Moldova. As I told you, it's 10% of the vote. So really, you move with your hand 10% of the votes and you move the needle in the political options. Now, this is huge and it's really hard to fight against.

The authorities are trying to do that. They started criminal investigation. They send the police in territory to intercept these pyramid schemes, actually, to distribute money. And they managed to catch some guys. And they expect there will be a deterrence effect for the second round of elections. But we have to see what the effect is because the magnitude of the interference is really huge. And it's not ideological. It's not propaganda. It's just buying votes from poor people in villages and towns.

through a hierarchical structure. And we can come back later to explain how they organize it because it's not for the first time. They did it in the local elections at the end of the last year. And really funny, funny episodes. It's worse having Netflix episode about these events in Moldova. That's a good segue to Georgia. Let me turn it over to Maria.

Yes, absolutely. I just want to flag that I think our region deserves much more Netflix episodes. It will make for a very funny, tragic show. Eto, can you please give our listeners some background on the last election in Georgia? Clearly, we've all seen the pictures of the protests. And why do the president of Georgia and his allies in the position believe the elections were rigged? What is your take on the issue? And perhaps mention the raid that has happened to your place.

Thank you, Marianne. Thank you for having me. So the official results published by the Central Election Commission of Georgia show that the ruling Georgian Dream Party is basically winning parliamentary elections with up to 54% of the vote, while the combined share of pro-Western opposition coalitions are somewhere at 50%.

37%. Most of the opposition refuses to these four big coalitions. They refuse to accept the results and they vote to protect the vote. Local observers point to a large-scale complex rigging scheme and the international observers also talk about flaws before and during the election day. On the night of elections, after the voting polls were closed, Georgian President Solomon Zorabishvili held a briefing

in which she said that she is not recognizing the official results of the elections. She said that it would be the same if she would recognize the Russian election results, basically. It's kind of paraphrased, but this is what she said. Interestingly, before the elections, there were conducted multiple exit polls. They were showing the results as 53% versus 37%, but vice versa. All the polls were showing that the opposition

position is winning combined by 53% and the ruling Georgian Dream was losing somewhere at 33%. According to the local watchdog estimates, when they are talking about this documented large-scale complex rigging scheme, they are talking about up to 300,000 votes. And of course, the whole year, the whole election year was documented to be about vote buying, about intimidation, something that our Moldovan colleague was just talking about.

There are many international reactions. I'll start very briefly from the US President Joe Biden, who issued today a statement expressing alarm at the Democratic backsliding in Georgia, saying that the elections on October 26 were marred by numerous record misuse of administrative resources, as well as voter intimidation and coercion. And he called Georgian government to conduct a transparent investigation into election results. He also added that Georgian citizens have a right

to peacefully express their views regarding the conduct of these elections, which independent and international and domestic observers have not said to be free and fair. Then the Sweden stopped cooperation with Georgian government. Also, U.S. Helsinki Commission has been issuing very strong statements calling for support to Georgian people. And the chairman, Joe Wilson, he issued a very strong worded statement saying that there should be an

investigation by the US State Department into the allegations of fraud and Russian interference, because there were many statements about Russian interference in these elections. And in general, Georgia's Western partners are questioning whether these elections were free and fair. So currently what we have is that on the one hand, Georgia's Western partners are questioning the fairness and freedom of these elections. But on the other, we have Russia, Maduro's authoritarian Venezuela,

China and Viktor Orban's Hungary, who are congratulating Georgian Dream on holding these elections as free and fair, and basically congratulating them on winning. So this is the current situation regarding the Georgian Day international viewpoint, but also the many local watchdogs are presenting their findings, basically documentation of this massive fraud and rigging. In terms of what happened in today's prior Georgian elections, my colleagues Sopo Gelava and my

house were raided by Georgian financial police. I'll just briefly mention specifically my case. In my case, they even lied. They said that they are from the gas company and that there is a leak in my house and they should quickly check something. And they seized all kinds of electronic devices, laptops, phones, memory sticks, et cetera.

I was deprived my rights to contact my lawyer. There were six police representatives who basically did not give me my phone. They pressured me to unlock it. They were mentioning my workplace, Atlantic Council, which is the US think tank. We are in Georgia. We've been mostly looking into Russian interference and meddling into the elections. We produce reports about this. So they were just mentioning that they are interested in the Atlantic Council. This is what I know. And then four days after the search,

Yesterday, our bank accounts were frozen. Interestingly, the bank is not officially saying that there is an assets freeze. And this gives some people, local organizations, suspicions that maybe there were some indirect calls that the bank received to informally freeze our accounts. They are mentioning some technical issues regarding only two of our accounts, my colleagues and mine. So yeah, this, everything put together brings some suspicions.

Regarding all other details, Atlantic Council issued a statement documenting the overall situation. Thank you very much, Etta. And sorry for what you had to go through. I have two follow-up questions. What do you think they were trying to achieve by entering your apartment, seizing all of the electronic devices, which, by the way, is very reminiscent of how this is done in Russia, the regime oppresses the liberal position? And second, does their position have the plan moving forward so far?

my understanding that the opposition refused to acknowledge the results but it's not very clear whether they have a very clear pathway as to what to do and some observers have pointed out that the regime was smart at stealing this election without making the numbers outrageous like the numbers are slightly above what was expected and it makes it harder for the Georgian opposition to sort of mobilize people and unite based on these appeals what do you think about it?

Answered with the first question, I guess the first aim was there to intimidate the wider society in Georgia and to basically show that if they can do this kind of raids at two places of my colleagues' support and mine, I guess that nobody is really safe in Georgia. Because we saw the similar things in May during the protests, which were protesting Georgian Dream's move to pass Russian-style foreign agents law. We had to

couple of days in May when the houses of politicians and activists were not raided, but they were beaten in front of their house. And then, of course, this was news all over Georgia, and this served as a wider intimidation tactics. I guess given that, and this is a quote by the police who was conducting the search, that they were interested in my workplace, I guess that they were interested in what we had

But honestly, we are still searching for their responses. We have no understanding because they are not giving us the further details of why are they doing this. In terms of the opposition plans, so the first thing they are trying to do, and Maria, you correctly pointed out that this was perfectly planned rigging. This is how other local watchdogs are referring to it. Because usually during previous elections, what local watchdogs have documented is that there was always 7-8% of rigging that they could prosecute.

And this was the usual thing. Of course, this sounds tragicomic, but we know that this happens. But currently, what is surprising is that, yes, according to local watchdogs, there was this

7-8% which they are currently able to prove but then there is another 14% which is questioned by local watchdogs and this is hard to prove and they are searching for other new tactics. But of course even the 7-8% it's nothing that we can just talk about oh you know only 7% was rigged. There are the evidences that the local organization have and they are presenting them. In terms of the

future plans by opposition parties. They said that first phase is to collect all the evidences because they have to convince not only Georgian society, but the international society that this was a widespread systematic rigging of the elections. And the second thing that they mentioned today was the protests, because protests, according to one of the parties, is the showing the people's will that they are not buying that the elections were free and fair.

Soren, let me maybe turn back to you. If you could maybe set the stage for the second round of the presidential election that is coming up in Moldova and how you see it. Maya Sandu, of course, got the largest amounts of votes, 42%. Do you think she will easily go on to win this? That's not the sense that I get from a lot of experts. I'm curious how you see the second round of voting playing out.

No, it's not easy because as I said you start with this handicap of about 10%, which were the estimated amount of votes which are stolen or moved away on the other cam through this means in the first round. It might be less in the second round, but obviously there were questions before whether she can win from the first round, so get over 50%, and she only got 42%, which is quite low.

And stealing the vote by Ilan Shor and his scheme is not the only reason. There is a penalization by the voters for the regime. It's been in place for almost four years, you know, and since 2020, when she was installed as a president, we had COVID crisis, the escalation of war against Ukraine, which means refugee crisis.

They have a lot of refugees per capita from Ukraine. The energy scares by Russia, especially during the winters, and the winter is approaching. Dependency on Gazprom, inflation like everywhere in Europe. So they are confronting all these difficulties plus mistakes that they made. So the past government made mistakes.

and there were people of dubious quality and there's a shortage of competencies in the administration. All these things are visible and it's normal there is an erosion in political capital of a regime and people vote against it also for this reason. So it's not just Elaine Scher who's stealing votes. Now, she has to explain all these things in order to win back the presidency

It hangs in balance, as I said. Probably she has more than 50% of the chances to win, so she has the first chance against Stoia Noglu. But the race is tighter than expected because she's somewhat limited in her electoral pool. So she got everything what she could get in the first round, except some very small splinters, because there are also actors.

It's not just a two-actor game in Moldova, there are more actors in the field. There are some very small ones who call themselves pro-European, or even are pro-European, but for some reason hate her party and herself personally. It happens in politics, you know, including mayors, important mayors in territory, they had quarrels with her party, so they didn't help with the referendum, and they rather support or are passive in the second round.

On the other hand, Toya Nogro, the pro-Kremlin candidate, there were more candidates with chances and with substantial percentages in the first round, and most likely he will collect those votes. So he will get closer to Maia in the second round. The big question is,

The third candidate who came on third place, this Renato Usati, a very, very, probably the most interesting character in Moldovan politics today. It's a maverick, really unpredictable, charismatic young guy who used to be mayor of the second biggest city, Balz, years ago. Actually, he made a fortune in Russia working with some association of the

Russian Federal Railways. I mean, you can imagine what kind of connections you need to make a fortune there working with Russian Railways, right? A state company. And then he had to leave Russia because he fell apart with the authorities. He came back to Moldova.

He became mayor of Belts, this big city, then he fled again because he was investigated and he was mayor leading the city on Zoom from an apartment in Moscow, you know, and there are famous episodes, you could see him with some old style furniture in a small apartment in Moscow, communist apartment. Then he fell apart again with Russian authorities and he came back to Moldova. He makes a difference in elections. He's

man, because he's a man, is now the mayor of this city, Balți, and he won elections in one round. He got almost 14% in the first round. Now the question is, where do these 14% go? To Maia Sandu or to Stoia Noglu? The estimates are

Roughly 50-50 or maybe 40 to Maia, 60 to Stoia Noglu. Yesterday he had a press conference, Renato Usate, and he gave no indication for voting. He said, basically, I hate both, so you are free to vote as you please. So that was his indication, which means things again are very much in balance for the second round. Interesting, interesting how territories voted in the first round, which is also an indication what might happen in the second one.

because there was a high rate of participation in the so-called anti-European territories. You know, the north of Moldova and the south tend to vote rather skeptical for Europe and against Maya Sandu. They are more Soviet or nostalgic. But this time, the diaspora saved the day, as they say now in Moldova, because they turned up in higher numbers than expected.

About a quarter of the people in diaspora voted and they voted predominantly for EU. And then something again totally unexpected, in Chisinau, the capital city, the rate of participation was much higher than in the rest of the territory. It never happened before and it never happened in our countries, in Romania. In the other countries, usually the cities vote less.

And the people in villages, older people who are clientelized by these parties, they vote in higher numbers. Now this was a reversal in Moldova and it's Chisinau and the diaspora who saved the day.

Now, we have to see if the pattern is carried over in the second round, because this is a chance for the pro-European camp represented by Biden. Now, Stojan Oglo himself, he's a non-entity. He's one of the hologram candidates or satellite candidates put up by these pro-European camps.

himself by the Socialist Party, successor of the Communist Party, which is actually run by Igor Dodon, the former president. But Ilan Shor has a very interesting technique to create many parties, multiple candidates, and once they are banned or disqualified by legislation because they are proved to take money from abroad, he immediately creates another one.

And this is what happened also in these presidential elections. So you have a lady that nobody knows about before these elections, Victoria Fortuna, running as a presidential candidate in the first round for sure parties. She got a substantial vote and that will go to Stoianoglu for sure because these are votes manipulated.

In the local elections last year, very interesting episodes in the Orhei city and Rayon, again, a big city, where Ilan Shor was a mayor before becoming a fugitive, right? In the local elections, he put up a candidate, that guy was disqualified then. He put up a lady, she was disqualified as well, and in the very last day of the campaign, she appointed another lady whom nobody knew about. She was a journalist, a low-time journalist, even a camera operator.

without any political profile at all. Nobody in Orhei knew who she was and she had precisely one day to run a campaign. Now she won 56% and she is now mayor of Orhei. So this is how it goes. Amazingly how swift and how much control they have with WhatsApp, Viber and Telegram over this hierarchy of coordinators in territory and they can issue instructions in three days, they move

a lot of votes from one candidate to the other. So this is the stake for the second round. How many people can they instrumentalize again on

on behalf of Stoianoglu, who is absolutely uncharismatic candidate. He barely speaks Romanian. He barely speaks Russian. I think we'll be waiting for the elections with bated breath, as you describe, I think, an incredibly volatile political climate. And it seems that the expats, the diaspora community, will likely play a really important role going forward. Eto', I want to turn back to you. Maria, maybe I'll just jump in here. My question for you, Eto', is it feels like...

that this is clearly a stolen election, an outcome that is incredibly outrageous, what the government has done, that the response from the international community has been not as strong as it probably should have been, particularly on the EU side with Viktor Orban flying in. The Commission and von der Leyen have come out in a much stronger way, but perhaps not as strong as needed. But I'm also curious about

about the opposition response. I mean, Maria touched on this in the earlier question, but it does strike me that the opposition has lost some momentum here as we're sort of waiting days and days and days. And, you know, there was a big protest in Tbilisi, but my understanding right now that there isn't really a huge protest movement taking place. I'm curious what is happening right now in Tbilisi. And do you think that there's some momentum being lost here

by the opposition not sort of directly confronting right out of the gates and sort of waiting for the international community and other results to kind of dictate how the opposition is going to respond? Yeah, that's a very good question, Max. This feeling is that like on the one hand, the opposition is trying to collect as many evidence as possible to convince Georgians, but on the other, the days are passing and the Georgians are waiting for basically the next instructions for the politicians

the politicians, not the civil society. I think that what was the first shock was that judging from the previous elections, everybody knew about this 7-8% rigging because it was always proved. And this is what they were expecting, but nobody was expecting the stealing.

this kind of massive stealing with all this, I don't know, plus 14%. And the local assessments were like, this was a shock for political opposition as well, because nobody expected this kind of massive stealing of the elections. It was today when the opposition mentioned the street protest, but I guess that they are still kind of hesitating and waiting for more statements from the outside as well as

evidences from the inside. But yeah, I agree that the clock might be ticking there. But another thing is that protests are definitely coming, given that people want to protest and defend their votes and given the political opposition mentioned today. And the protests are really important because what we saw, given that we were closely monitoring how the Georgian Dream was trying to shape the information space and spread the various claims, the protests was one of them.

In the lead up to the elections, like the whole year, Georgian Dream was trying to convince Georgian citizens that something will happen on the election day after, like Georgian Dream is winning, but the small group, it's a quote, which is managed by the US, will try to organize a coup d'etat. They will organize protests, and these protests will not be either legit or legitimate, but

and we will use the force to crack down this protest. So they knew that there will be protests and currently they kind of framed the reality in advance to use the force on the day of protest. Interestingly, the same statement has been spread by the SVR, Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service, together with Georgian Dream. They were...

at least four statements coming out of the Russian intelligence service claiming that there will be protests in Georgia, which will claim that the elections are rigged. And this is the US trying to organize the color revolution. This narrative has been promoted heavily on Facebook. Georgian Dream was paying for many advertisements to reach as many people as possible to convince that

Any kind of protests are illegitimate and this will be just a small group organized by the US. And I guess that given that the protests will be coming, they will be definitely using this force to crack down on protests. Another thing which was very interesting, you mentioned Orban and Orban was also used to convince Georgians that there exists two kinds of West and two kinds of EU. One is Brussels, which is dictating its rule and its rule of law and democracy.

And another one is Orban. Orban's Hungary. Since 2012, Georgian Dream election campaigns have been built on promises of bringing Georgia closer to the EU. Even today, and even this campaign, despite these unprecedented attacks on the West, Georgian Dream's election banners were displaying EU flags. But they were saying that Orban, who is, of course, an increasingly authoritarian leader who has

systematically undermine democracy at home and who has challenged democratic values across the EU. The Georgian Dream is saying that Orban is a face of Europe that Georgians should aspire to. He's fighting for traditional Christian conservative family values and also he's struggling against EU's quote, LGBT policy.

plus propaganda. So this was happening prior to elections and what we saw was that they brought Orban to basically justify these elections as free and fair. Serene and Eto, thank you for a very important analysis. Could you please explain why this particular election season is so important, right? It's not the first time that both Moldova and Georgia are making this decision between West

and East, so to speak, or maybe Putin, anti-Putin. But why does it feel so consequential and in some ways somewhat of a changing tide? Again, please correct me if I'm wrong. And how do you think, what is the significance of this election going forward?

If I'm to refer to Moldova, it depends what you call a season, because the presidential elections came at term and the whole thing will not stop here in the second round, because Moldova will have to hold parliamentary elections next summer. So by all signs, the campaign will continue. We're all over and there will be a continuous political fight and propaganda until June or July, when they organize elections.

And the parliament is important because right now the pro-European party has more than 60%, which is very unusual. It was a very unusual situation. But the next parliament will be much more balanced with more pro-Kremlin actors in it, much more confusing and much more political effort will be needed.

Now, there is a sense of, if you want, acceleration of history in this part of the world, and mostly it's because of the escalation of war in Ukraine and the uncertainty in the region. And probably this is why Maya Sandu brought forward this referendum that current member countries held at the end of the discussion on chapters.

So when you finish negotiation, we held a referenda. Now she held it at the beginning of the discussions because Moldova was just recently invited, together with Ukraine, to start as a candidate for the European Union. Whether it was a good political decision or not, we will see in the future. It turned out well, so legally the referendum has lasted.

consequences, the constitution will be modified, it would have been much worse, you know, just one percentage less. It would have been invalidated and the political consequences would be incalculable. But the propaganda for the second drought continues because Stoia Noglu, her opponent,

He doesn't say I'm against Europe. He's not like the Georgian dream. He says, no, no, no, no, no. We are pro-EU, OK, but we want to be good with Russia as well and with the others. We want in Europe. But why referendum now? And he tries to portray himself like a more centrist, but I don't think he will fool many people because he's one of the fake characters in Moldovan politics created, you know, pulled out of a hat, as I mentioned about the others in the presidential contest.

And the results in the second round will be crucial, because try to imagine that you will have in Chisinau, if Stoianoglu wins, a pro-Kremlin camp led by the Socialist Party with Dodon behind the president and all the old characters, visibly hostile to Ukraine,

and then Ukraine in full war, right? So, there were, Kishinev will not be a friend of Ukraine anymore, it will be a hostile country right behind it. Now, what might happen, you know, because there were many questions in the last years and there were, you know, rumors and negotiations behind the table whether Ukraine can do something about the separatist territory of Transnistria where there is soldiers of the Russian army, actually,

And a very big ammunition depot of inherited from the Soviet army. And in general, this regime, which is a black hole and illegitimate and not recognized by anyone. So try to imagine what will happen if in Chisinau there will be a regime which is perceived by Kiev as being hostile.

While the whole propaganda of their camp is, we want peace, you know, this is a cliche, like Viktor Orban cliche, no. We are not against, we want peace. Peace meaning Kiev surrender, right, in Putin's terms. It's a shortcut from Ukrainian surrender. So if you have such guys in Chisinau, the implications in the region will be massive, actually, and it will be a complete change from what we have right now.

Certainly a very gloomy scenario. Thank you. Serena, maybe you have something to add to that on the consequences of this election for Georgia and widely for the region?

What is happening in Georgia and Moldova now, it's of course the part of this global fight between the authoritarian club versus free and democratic world. And of course, these two countries, as well as Ukraine, they are part of this global fight. In the light of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia is trying to finish its job.

in Georgia to cement the country on its orbit. Many people say that like in Georgia, what is currently happening is that people are choosing between if they become the Russian orbit country or the West. I wouldn't agree with this. Georgia is already on the Russian orbit. There are so many things that have happened in Georgia over the past decade under this false promise of drawing closer to the EU. Georgia has taken this turn from being the beacon of democracy to sliding

towards authoritarianism. We now suffer from a captured judiciary and the captured institutions. We have laws increasingly targeting media and civil society. We have widespread violations of human rights. When the Western countries began to isolate Russia after Russia's reinvasion of Ukraine in 2022, Georgia tightened its relations with Russia. We have the

the current and former government officials with Georgian Dream who have faced sanctions from the West, first for undermining democracy, and second, acting as agents of Russian intelligence service to influence Georgian society and politics for the benefit of Russia. So we are already on this Russian orbit. The current choice that the Georgians are facing is that either they manage to somehow escape

this orbit and get back to the pro-Western past, or they just stay on this orbit and they are cemented there together with Belarus. And basically we joined the authoritarian club. So this is the current internal fight, but again, it's being as a part of the more broader fight between authoritarians and freedom and democratic world.

And so maybe one last question. How are you doing? Are you nervous about your safety? Are you concerned about, you know, you potentially being imprisoned if the government gets away with the stolen election? Are you thinking about your future in Georgia? Maybe, I mean, however much you want to share, I'm just curious how you are doing and how you are currently assessing the situation.

Thank you, Max, very much for asking this question. First of all, given that the Georgian Dream is very close ally of Russia and basically we have the Russian style rule in Georgia, we cannot rule out anything. But the second, the day after our electronics and laptops were seized,

My colleague and I, we published our research, which documented how the Georgian Dream is trying to frame upcoming protests as U.S.-managed in the sign to show to Georgians as well as the international society that we are not afraid and we continue to do our work. So I just want to show to everyone that we are just continue to defend freedom and democracy in Georgia.

Eto, thank you so much for your bravery. Thanks for coming on. Sorin, thank you so much also for breaking down what is a very complicated election process in a very complicated country in Moldova. And our thoughts are with both of your countries in the coming days and weeks. So unfortunately, we're going to have to leave it there. Thank you, as always, to our listeners for tuning in. If you haven't already, please don't forget to subscribe to our podcast and give us a five-star rating.

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