Why Moldova is second on Putin’s list: what The New York Times learned the Kremlin’s plan to ‘collapse’ NATO and the EU from within
Vladimir Putin gathered his military commanders for a briefing in late 2025 and set a goal for 2026: “the collapse of NATO and the EU from within,” The New York Times reported, citing officials from two countries familiar with the details of the meeting.
Moldova is central to those plans, according to the newspaper’s sources. Western intelligence officials say the Kremlin’s top priority is subjugating Ukraine, followed by taking control of Moldova. Around the same time, though — at a meeting of senior Defense Ministry officials — Putin publicly criticized European leaders for “stoking hysteria” over the threat of a Russian attack. “I’ve said this many times: it’s a lie, it’s nonsense, sheer nonsense — this talk of some imagined Russian threat to European countries,” he said.
Moldova would make an ideal staging ground for further Russian aggression against both Ukraine and the West, The Times’s sources said. They also said Putin still hopes to seize territory in southern Ukraine to create a land corridor linking Russia to Moldova.
To that end, Russia tried, among other things, to interfere in Moldova’s parliamentary elections, held on September 28, 2025, using cyberattacks, disinformation, vote-buying, and canvassing.
Moldovan priests were also enlisted in the Kremlin’s campaign. They traveled to Russia, where they were given Promsvyazbank debit cards. Back in Moldova, they were to be paid $1,000 to persuade parishioners to vote against the referendum on joining the European Union and to speak out against the country’s pro-Western policies. The elections were called “historic” at the time, with observers saying the future of Moldova’s European integration hinged largely on the outcome.
In the summer of 2025, a training camp was set up in Serbia. Its participants — most of them Moldovan citizens — were taught to use rifles, break through police lines, and set buildings on fire. They were paid $400 for a three- to four-day course. The instructors were operatives linked to Russian military intelligence — the GRU — and the camp was meant to build a cadre of fighters trained to disrupt elections, Western intelligence officials said.
A similar camp was held in Bosnia, and another outside Moscow. Moldovan prosecutors said more than 100 young Moldovans attended the Moscow camp and were taught to make and use incendiary materials and improvised explosive devices, and to handle drones “with special attachments for explosives or arson.”
Stanislav Secrieru, Moldova’s presidential adviser on national security and defense, said Russia wants to use Moldova “as a springboard for hostile activities against Ukraine as well as its main defense and financial supporter, the EU.” “For these reasons,” he said, “Russia allocated over the last few years unprecedented resources.”
Moldovan authorities, however, were prepared, according to The Times. In the weeks before the vote, police searched hundreds of homes and detained people who had trained at the camps. Moldova’s cybersecurity specialists, backed by Western allies, fended off the cyberattacks. President Maia Sandu’s party held on to its parliamentary majority. “We won the battle,” said Mihai Lupașcu, the director of Moldova’s Agency for Cybersecurity. “But we did not win the war.”
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