It's election season in Eastern Europe, and for the Kremlin -- bogged down in Ukraine and desperately in need of allies -- the stakes are higher than ever.
Moldova is holding a presidential election and referendum on October 20 that could help secure the country's future in the EU. Romania has just banned a pro-Kremlin rabble-rouser from running in its November presidential election. And the pro-Kremlin, far-right Revival party in Bulgaria is expected to win a sizable presence in parliament after upcoming elections.
So what is the Kremlin -- and its populist regional allies -- pulling from its playbook to influence the votes?
Don't Be Too Fussy About Who You Work With
Plan A, according to Anton Shekhovtsov, a Ukrainian political scientist and expert on the far right, "was always to cooperate with mainstream forces" and then corrupt them to align with Russian foreign policy interests.
In some countries, Plan A has worked, with the Kremlin maintaining good relations with politicians such as Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, and Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico.
"The problem for Moscow," Shekhovtsov said, "is that mainstream forces are less likely than the populists to cooperate with Russia, especially after 2014 (the annexation of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula) and even more so after February 2022 (Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine)."
That has meant increasingly falling back on Plan B. "Russia has tended to align with far-right parties," said Mitchell Orenstein, professor of Russian and East European studies at the University of Pennsylvania, "but it will also form alliances with far-left parties and even support centrist parties to some extent."
Acting pragmatically and working with the political fringes can sometimes bear fruit. For years, Revival leader Kostadin Kostadinov operated in extremist circles, once referring to Romany people as "parasites" and venomously castigating migrants. But now his party, which has opposed democratic reforms and advocated for Bulgaria's withdrawal from NATO, is tipped to finish as high as second in the October 27 parliamentary elections.
Be Careful With The Bags Of Cash
Authorities in Moldova -- which has struggled to shake off Kremlin influence and still has more than 1,000 Russian troops stationed in the breakaway region of Transdniester -- recently announced they had uncovered a scheme led by Ilan Shor, a pro-Russian fugitive accused of the country's biggest-ever bank fraud, to buy votes and disseminate false information about the EU, with more than 130,000 Moldovans receiving over $15 million in Russian cash in September alone.
Such schemes, however, are rarely discovered -- and often very hard to prove, with financial support masked by shell companies and offshore accounts. And for the Kremlin, direct financing is a risky tactic. "They are being very, very cautious," Shekhovtsov said, as "we're talking about criminal activity here because there are no taxes [and parties are] taking money from a foreign power."
A Deluge Of Disinformation
For the Kremlin, a cheaper and more efficient way of boosting its allies in Eastern Europe is to flood the market with disinformation.
In addition to Russian state outlets such as RT, "Russia has websites in different European languages that promote messages beneficial to antiestablishment, populist forces," Shekhovtsov said. "This compensates for the populists' lack of media influence in their own countries."
U.S. tech giant Meta said on October 11 that it had deleted a network of accounts aimed at Russian-speaking Moldovans, which spread pro-Russian content and ran pages masquerading as independent news outlets.
Such operations are often part of larger networks, sometimes known as "mushroom sites," which are created in bulk and on the cheap and monetize the spread of disinformation.
Mobilize Through Fear
If you buy into the disinformation, migrants are coming for your jobs, the LGBT community is coming for your children's souls, foreign-funded NGOs are plotting to topple governments, and only Russia can restore peace to fascist Ukraine.
Igor Dodon, Moldova's Moscow-backed former president, has recently warned, without any evidence, of "LGBT quotas" in state institutions if the country's pro-EU President Maia Sandu wins reelection.
And in Bulgaria, Revival is pushing for a Russian-style foreign-agent law, which would target Western NGOs. "You will be next!" party leader Kostadinov told the America for Bulgaria Foundation, the country's largest foreign donor.
In socially conservative societies, with people disillusioned with democracy and reeling from economic hardship, much of it from the COVID-19 pandemic, such emotional narratives often strike a powerful chord.
By scaremongering about threats to traditional lifestyles and sovereignty, Russia is positioning itself -- not for the first time -- as the region's potential savior.
Tailor The Message
A key part of the Kremlin's strategy is localizing its messaging. "Russia looks for any possible commonality between their approach and the parties they're supporting," Orenstein said. "In one country, they might appeal to pan-Slavism; in another, to Orthodox religious connections; and in yet another, to anti-Ukrainian sentiment."
For example, in Bulgaria, pro-Russian parties play on Soviet nostalgia and well-established narratives of Russia as a liberator from Ottoman rule. In Hungary and Slovakia, pro-Kremlin parties exploit fears about migrants and the perception that the EU is undermining national sovereignty.
In Moldova, Irina Vlah, a pro-Moscow ex-governor, has said the country's large number of Romanian passport holders is evidence of a sinister Romanian plot to take over its smaller and poorer neighbor.
What Is The Kremlin's Endgame?
In the long term, the Kremlin's goal is to undermine the EU and NATO and pull countries in Eastern Europe back into Russia's orbit.
In the short term, it's all about Ukraine. For the Kremlin, that means blowing apart the fragile European consensus that Kyiv is deserving of military and economic support.
What the Kremlin cares about most, Orenstein says, is the "foreign policy orientation" of parties it supports in Eastern Europe -- in order to secure their backing on issues such as sanctions or the status of Crimea.
"You have some parties that [when] they began taking Russian support, they actually changed a lot of their foreign policy positions to orient them towards Russia," Orenstein said.
Crucially, though, Russia doesn't necessarily need explicit support to succeed. Sometimes sowing discord and polarizing populations can also chip away at the democracies and civil societies the Kremlin so desperately fears.
