Today we bring another excellent piece from Carnegie Politika, from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (CEIP). Remember, if you’re interested in watching and learning about the history unfolding before your eyes, consider subscribing to CEIP’s news feeds or podcasts.
We bring our unauthorized translations of Carnegie Politika’s excellent journalism to our readers because they are compelling, salient to the focus of our efforts, worthy of preserving in a broadly-read language and, to the best of our knowledge, available nowhere else in English.
Today’s piece is authored by Galiya Izbragimova (Галия Избрагимова) – well worth following along with the rest of Carnegie’s team.
Time for Deals: How Moldova Wound Up Between Trump and Putin
Galiya Izbragimova
26 May 2025
Chișinău is closely following Donald Trump’s rhetoric with concern, as he concedes the possibility of a deal with Russia to end the war in Ukraine. As long as the Russian threat to Kyiv is not eliminated, Moldova remains at risk: on the one hand, large-scale military operations in the neighboring country, on the other, Moscow’s constant attempts to destabilize the situation from within.
If the US-Russia talks reach a dead end, Washington may lose interest in the Ukrainian sector, and with it, probably, in the region as a whole. Then Chișinău will have to look for opportunities to continue its pro-European course under the difficult conditions of an absence of American support and growing Russian influence.
Complexities of adaptation
Unlike the countries of the South Caucasus and Central Asia, which have limited themselves to muted calls for peace since the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Moldova, another country that Russia has always tried to influence, has taken a clear pro-Ukrainian stance. Chișinău has effectively frozen relations with Moscow.
At first, this course seemed not only morally justified, but also prudent. However, today, against the backdrop of Trump’s attempts to end the conflict through direct negotiations with Vladimir Putin, Chișinău faces a serious challenge: how to build foreign policy in a situation where Russia is becoming a partner, rather than an adversary, of the United States.
Even a brief lull in military action will allow the Kremlin to redistribute resources, including restoring its lost influence in the post-Soviet space. In this case, Moldova, which has consistently followed an anti-Russian course over the past three years, may end up among the priority targets, if not for military intervention, then for political pressure and direct misinformation.
At the same time, the West is unlikely to be able to support Moldova as actively as it did immediately after the start of the full-scale war in Ukraine. Between February and mid-October 2022 alone, the United States transferred about $200 million in aid to Chișinău. A significant portion of the money went toward modernizing the Moldovan armed forces. At the end of 2024, it was announced that the total amount of American aid received by Moldova since February 2022 would soon reach $949 million. This included funding for humanitarian and economic projects.
For example, USAID was supposed to finance the construction of a high-voltage line between Moldova and Romania, a strategically important infrastructure project that would reduce the country’s dependence on Russian energy resources and on the supply of electricity (produced with Russian assistance) to Transnistria. However, after Trump froze USAID’s activities, the fate of this aid remains unclear.
Moscow also benefits from the fact that many independent media, human rights organizations, and civil initiatives in Moldova are left without required funding that previously came from the United States. This is especially painful for a country in need of large-scale reforms of its public administration system and suffering from serious domestic political discord.
Of course, Moldova has other external partners, first and foremost the European Union. However, there are doubts that the EU, which already allocates a lot of funding for Moldova, will be ready to replace the disappearing American aid. In addition, the possible normalization of relations between Moscow and Washington creates a new geopolitical configuration, where Russia is no longer perceived as an unconditional threat to the West. And this will require much greater flexibility from the Moldovan authorities to maintain the previous course towards European integration.
Trumpism, Moldovan style
Moldova’s adaptation to Trump’s pragmatic foreign policy is also complicated by deep domestic polarization. The results of the referendum on European integration and Maia Sandu’s extremely difficult victory in the presidential election last fall showed that a significant part of Moldovans still do not consider Russia a threat. For this audience, Trump’s rhetoric, including calls for normalizing relations with Moscow, sounds much more convincing than the current Moldovan leadership’s uncontested course toward EU membership.
Many Moldovans have long enjoyed the most accessible benefits of European integration, such as visa-free travel and a free trade zone. Therefore, reports on further achievements on the path to the EU interest them much less than the weak progress in solving numerous domestic challenges, such as the fight against corruption, rising incomes, and rising prices.
In 2024, Moldova’s GDP grew by only 0.1%. Inflation reached 7%, which was facilitated by a sharp rise in gas and electricity prices. Although the authorities managed to stabilize the situation after the cessation of Russian gas supplies, from which electricity was generated and resold to Chișinău at the Moldovan State District Power Plant in Transnistria, a sustainable energy supply mechanism has not yet been developed. As a result, the gap between the population’s expectations and the authorities’ rhetoric continues to grow.
All this opens up new opportunities for the opposition ahead of the parliamentary elections slated for this September, particularly since the opponents of the government are actively adapting to the new reality. If previously the main opponents of the pro-European camp were openly pro-Russian forces, now they are positioning themselves as supporters of national sovereignty, conservative values, and pragmatism in foreign policy. Even the leader of the socialists and former president Igor Dodon, who has never hidden his pro-Russian views, is now drawn to such rhetoric and intends to rename his party “sovereignist.”
Among the centrists who advocate pragmatic cooperation with both the West and Russia is former Prosecutor General Alexandru Stoianoglo, who made it to the second round of the last presidential elections, slightly behind the eventual winner Sandu. He will participate in the parliamentary elections as part of the Alternative coalition, which also includes Chișinău Mayor Ion Ceban, former Prime Minister Ion Chicu and former ideologist of the Moldovan communists Mark Tkachuk.
The coalition positions itself as an alternative to both the ruling pro-European Party of Action and Solidarity (PAS) and the traditional pro-Russian opposition, offering a third way: pragmatic relations with both the EU and Russia. This line echoes the rhetoric of European conservatives: cooperation with certain world powers is possible only on terms that meet national interests.
This ideology — the priority of domestic tasks and the limitation of external influence — is also characteristic of Trump. Given this, Ion Ceban’s April meeting with Donald Trump Jr. at a closed event in Romania appears fitting. The mayor of Chișinău even published a photo with the US president’s son and the caption MAKE MOLDOVA GREAT AGAIN. Ceban’s associates are trying to fit into Trump’s agenda: they called on the Moldovan authorities to support the US president’s peace efforts in Ukraine, and then, after a short wait, criticized them for their silence.
Riding the wave
Meanwhile, the ruling Party of Action and Solidarity (PAS) seems not to have noticed the changes. Since 2021, its slogan “Vote for PAS. Team Europe” and the main message have remained unchanged: only accession to the EU will ensure sustainable development for Moldova.
The pro-European authorities can count Moldova’s candidate status and the start of negotiations on joining the EU as an asset — and are already doing so. At the same time, since the beginning of PAS’s rule, the European Union has become not just a symbol of foreign policy choice in Moldova, but also an important source of financial support. Brussels has allocated money for road construction, healthcare, education, and energy. Each visit by European officials was accompanied by new aid packages. The largest of them, worth 1.8 billion euros, was approved by the European Commission in October 2024.
In early 2025, at the height of the energy crisis following the cessation of Russian gas supplies, Brussels offered assistance not only to Chișinău, but also to Transnistria. This was an important signal, intended to confirm that the Transnistrian problem was not an insurmountable obstacle to Moldova’s European integration. And recently, Brussels announced that a Moldova-EU summit would be held in Chișinău in July, which would once again demonstrate European support for the country’s current course. However, such gestures, which have become tiresome even for supporters of European integration, are unlikely to ensure PAS’s victory in the elections.
If the ruling party does not adapt to the new reality, does not update its program, and does not offer people a relevant agenda – as the opposition has already begun to do, albeit for populist reasons – then it risks losing its parliamentary majority. In order to maintain a pro-European course, it will probably have to form a coalition with ideologically heterogeneous, but conditionally pro-European forces. However, for now, the authorities have demonstrated an unwillingness to make any compromises. PAS’s chances of winning an absolute majority in parliament and forming a new government on its own are diminishing. And any coalition will inevitably lead to constant bargaining and wrangling, which will further slow down pro-European reforms and may weaken the EU’s interest in Moldova. The EU is currently focused on how to ensure its own security under Trump and is trying with all its might to maintain internal unity, so it is unlikely to delve into Moldova’s domestic political tensions. As a result, the topic of enlargement may again fade into the background, and Moldova risks getting stuck in a gray zone again – both in foreign and domestic policy.
Translating History 