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By RFE/RL staff – Nov 02, 2024, 2:00 PM CDT
- Moldova proactively countered Russian influence through transparency, institutional strengthening, and public awareness campaigns, while Georgia’s government downplayed the issue, leaving civil society to take the lead.
- Both countries highlighted the importance of electoral integrity, with Moldova focusing on early prevention and Georgia demonstrating strong civil society involvement in monitoring and reporting.
- The Moldovan government actively tackled the influence of oligarchs and engaged the diaspora, while Georgia’s ruling party faced challenges related to its founder’s ties to Russia and limited diaspora engagement.
The election outcomes in Moldova and Georgia highlight the starkly differing ways their respective governments and civil society pushed back to resist Russian meddling and other nefarious elements at crucial junctures for both countries.
The votes — a presidential election and an EU constitutional referendum in Moldova and parliamentary elections in Georgia — packed the potential to dramatically realign both former Soviet republics’ geopolitical orientation or harden their current courses, with mounting challenges to both countries’ strong public preferences for further EU integration.
So the winners and losers matter. But some of the early lessons lie beyond their initial winners and suggest those votes can contribute to the playbook for other embattled societies — including among more mature democracies as well as other countries on Russia’s periphery.
Counter Russian Influence Early
Moldovan officials had warned for months of threats from Russia that included disinformation and facilitating millions in illicit payments for an informal network of anti-EU organizers. An analyst who spoke with Moldovan officials in the run-up to the voting quoted them to RFE/RL as saying, “We can follow the money.” And while they couldn’t stop the flow of cash from Russia, they saw it and publicly identified it for what it was.
Georgia provided a lesson of a different sort. Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze insisted as recently as last week that “Russia has no influence in Georgia.” Caught up in a balancing act to avoid appearing overtly pro-Russian to a Russia-wary public, Georgian Dream simply ignored the problem and cast the choice as one between “war” and “peace.”
As a result, even with President Salome Zurabishvili warning of Russian interference, it fell to the public to counter Moscow’s economic leverage and the mobilization of pro-Russian influencers and media.
Georgians and civil society groups were freshly energized by peaceful battles against the “foreign-agent” law, popularly known as the “Russian law,” and new curbs on the LGBT community, but experts told RFE/RL that preparations in the form of “raising the alarm” and “coalition building” actually began many months earlier.
Integrity And Transparency Are Key
Moldovan officials went on the offensive to protect the integrity of the country’s elections,