Paula Erizanu

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Maia Sandu applauds her supporters after winning Moldova’s presidential election, 3 November 2024. Photograph: Vladislav Culiomza/Reuters

MundoCáucaso,

Having lived in Britain for 12 years, I returned to my native Moldova in 2022 because I was worried that Russia’s war in Ukraine would spill into my country. Thanks to the Ukrainian resistance, the skies are still clear in Moldova. But in the past weeks leading up to the presidential runoff between the pro-European incumbent Maia Sandu and the Russian-supported former prosecutor general Alexandr Stoianoglo, I felt as if I might lose my country once again.

The scale of interference in these Moldovan elections has been unprecedented. As reported by excellent independent journalists in the country, our law enforcement agencies alleged the existence of a large-scale, vote-buying scheme in the first round, run by Ilan Shor – a Russian-backed fugitive oligarch, who denies any wrongdoing.…  Seguir leyendo »

A statue of Lenin in front of the legislative building in Transnistria, which claims independence from Moldova. Ramin Mazur/Panos Pictures, via Redux

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More and more people, including Pope Francis, are asking Ukraine to drop its defense and sit at the negotiation table with Russia. Citing the stalemate on the battlefield and Russia’s superior resources, they urge Ukraine’s leadership to consider a deal. What exactly that would involve is largely left unsaid. But it would clearly involve freezing the conflict, resigning Ukraine’s occupied territory to Russia in exchange for an end to the fighting.

My country, Moldova, knows all about that kind of bargain. A small western neighbor of Ukraine, Moldova experienced Russia’s first post-Soviet war of aggression, which ended with a cease-fire agreement in 1992.…  Seguir leyendo »

An installation dedicated to doctors struggling with Covid-19 in Chisinau, Moldova, November 2020. Photograph: Valery Sharifulin/TASS

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“I am happy to work on the frontline and to see the Canadian medical system function so well”, Alecu Mătrăgună wrote in a Facebook post, “but I am sad that I was vaccinated before my mother, who works in the medical system in Moldova”. Mătrăgună is a Moldovan sonographer living in Montreal. His mother is 61 and a paediatrician with more than 30 years’ service under her belt. Yet, he told me, she has no idea when the Covid-19 vaccine might become available for her and for more than 53,300 other healthcare staff in Europe’s poorest country.

I had a similar reaction to Mătrăgună’s about my family in Moldova when I saw a sign at my local London pharmacy as long ago as early December, announcing that the vaccine was on its way.…  Seguir leyendo »

An anti-government rally in Chisinau, Moldova, in 2015. Photograph: Dumitru Doru/EPA

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“A communist is someone who’s read Marx, an anti-communist is someone who’s understood it,” jokes one of the interviewees in Nobel prizewinner Svetlana Alexievich’s book Secondhand Time, which traces the impact of the breakup of the USSR on individual lives.

The same thought has run through my childhood and adult life in the former Soviet republic of Moldova. My grandparents were victims of Stalinist repression – my grandpa lost his father and three siblings in the state-engineered famine of 1946-47. My grandma was fired from her job as a teacher because she had buried her dead four-month-old daughter with a Christian cross.…  Seguir leyendo »