CHISINAU -- Attracted by free trips, haute cuisine, and a shot at millions of rubles in grants, hundreds of young people from Moldova have participated in a Russian outreach program with ties to Russian officials and a fugitive Moldovan oligarch that is aimed at rebranding Russia and “refriending” a new generation of politicians, journalists, and beauty queens.
Organizers from the Russia-based nonprofit group Evrazia asked for little more than enthusiasm and lots of personal details from participants from Moldova and other former Soviet republics in what RFE/RL confirmed have been at least 10 such expenses-paid trips to Moscow in the past four months.
Once in the Russian capital, the young people were addressed by “experts,” including some at the forefront of the Kremlin’s ongoing hybrid war against Western institutions and their partners in what Moscow used to refer to as its “near abroad.”
Artem, who only gave his first name, is one of several people who took one such trip and agreed to talk to RFE/RL’s Moldovan Service and Systema, RFE/RL’s Russian investigative unit, on condition of anonymity so they could speak freely about the experience without fear of reprisal. "Many of my peers enjoyed the trip because, first of all, no one paid for anything and none of them was going to participate” in any way outside of the trip, Artem said.
But others expressed interest in returning to Russia and getting “further involved in the organization,” he added.
SEE ALSO: Flipping The Channels: Moldova Faces A Huge Challenge Countering Pro-Kremlin PropagandaEvrazia is led by a Russian lawmaker raised in Moldova’s breakaway Transdniester region and was founded by a former accountant in the city administration of Orhei during the mayorship of Ilan Shor, the 37-year-old fugitive entrepreneur convicted in Moldova of masterminding the theft in 2014 of around $1 billion in banking assets.
Moldova’s pro-EU President Maia Sandu and her government allies have urged “maximum vigilance” and taken mounting steps to counter what she and experts have described as intense Russian efforts to destabilize Moldova and interfere with recent and looming elections, including through alleged vote-buying and other meddling linked to Shor, who recently got Russian citizenship but continues to lead an anti-government alliance from abroad.
Russia denies trying to destabilize Moldova, an aspiring EU member whose constitutionally mandated neutrality has been tested by fears emanating from Russia’s ongoing full-scale invasion of neighboring Ukraine and hundreds of Russian troops still occupying a Soviet-era weapons depot in Moldova’s breakaway region of Transdniester.
Agents Of Change?
RFE/RL journalists gained access to a closed Telegram chat group where Evrazia administrators had gathered around 30 young people to prepare for one of at least 10 trips in the past four months, sharing detailed plans for a June sojourn in Moscow within a “Let’s Get To Know Russia” program. Twenty-six of those who registered were Moldovan nationals, two were from Uzbekistan, and one was from Tajikistan.
Multiple participants in Artem’s Evrazia trip who spoke to RFE/RL said they were encouraged by their handlers to promote “Russian culture and the direction of Eurasian development” back in their home countries. All were required to provide personal information that was published in the closed chat for others to see: passport numbers, expiration dates, and phone numbers. They were also asked to choose among options like applying for a grant, enrolling in Evrazia’s media school, or becoming a politician or “ambassador of Eurasia.”
Once on the trip, they were repeatedly urged to apply for what were described as sure-fire Evrazia grants of up to 1 million Russian rubles ($11,600) per project. “It was just a matter of submitting a request,” Artem said they were told.
Financial transfers are banned between Russia and Moldova, and officials have reported a rise in the amount of cash confiscated from Shor supporters returning from Moscow since the launch of Pobeda (Russian for "victory"), the pro-Kremlin, anti-Western electoral bloc formed by Shor in April. Returnees from the Evrazia program have complained of airport searches upon their return.
Thirteen of the 73 grants that the organization lists from one recent competition were given to Moldovans. They include one to repair monuments to fallen soldiers in World War II, a topic that has particularly infuriated Russia as state and local governments behind the former Iron Curtain have dismantled, relocated, or simply contextualized Soviet-era monuments to Red Army troops. Another involves organizing an unspecified film “marathon,” for example, while a third pledges to open a support center for mothers of children with disabilities.
The list of projects selected for funding, following a "first" grant competition called "Eurasia -- The Continent Of Possibilities."
Participants in the Evrazia trips have included a freshly dethroned Miss Moldova 2023, Diana Spotarenko, who comes from the southern autonomous region of Gagauzia; Nicolai Sicolai, the leader of the Moldovan youth group Next Generation; and Ivan Panea, a member of the pro-Russian Revival Party allied with Pobeda.
'We Just Want To Be Friends'
Shor fled to Israel in 2014 and turned up in Russia earlier this year, where he has since obtained Russian citizenship. In between, Shor, who also holds an Israeli passport, was targeted by U.S. sanctions and launched and led an eponymous Moldovan political party that was briefly banned for alleged destabilization efforts and eventually abandoned for Pobeda. Shor has orchestrated those political activities from abroad.
A former accountant at Orhei’s city hall during Shor’s four-year stint as mayor, Nelli Parutenco, who fled Moldova amid an ongoing investigation in 2022, is the founding director of Evrazia.
SEE ALSO: Ilan Shor: The Kremlin's New Man In MoldovaOther notable Moldovans involved include Natalia Parasca, the leader of the pro-Russian Revival Party, who is on Evrazia’s management board. Moldova’s communist ex-President Vladimir Voronin virtually attended an Evrazia launch event in Moscow in April, and Evghenia Gutul, the governor of the autonomous Gagauzia region and a Shor political ally, appeared in person at the same event.
“We are peaceful, we simply want to be friends,” Evrazia board president and Russian lawmaker Alyona Arshinova, who has spearheaded the push to “refriend” former Soviet republics, said in May via RT, the Russian state international broadcaster, which is banned in Moldova and the European Union. Arshinova, the daughter of a Russian serviceman, grew up in Transdniester, where a Russian-speaking separatist leadership continues to resist Chisinau control. Arshinova is on Western sanctions lists over her support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
'Expert' Speakers
Recent reporting suggests Russia is increasingly trying to recruit young foreigners through visits and internships in response to high-profile expulsions that have taken a toll on intelligence-gathering in the West. While one such report by the Russian-language portal The Insider did not mention Evrazia, it said Russian intelligence was creating such nonprofits as “cover” to identify sympathizers and groom future spies.
Previous Evrazia events have included appearances by Aleksandr Dugin, a radical right-wing Russian ideologue and advocate for an authoritarian Eurasian state who is thought to have influenced Russian President Vladimir Putin’s geopolitical views.
They have also featured Russian political scientist Sergei Markov, a frequent pro-Putin agitator and former political adviser to ousted pro-Russian Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych. In the early months of Russia’s all-out invasion of Ukraine, Markov sparked unfounded rumors that Romanian troops were “already stationed” in Moldova and planned to “invade” and seize Transdniester “with support from NATO and the participation of the Ukrainian Army.”
There were no “hidden conditions” for a recent three-day Evrazia trip described as a “gastronomic” tour, according to a chat administrator with the username “Afanasii,” except that participants must “not only eat” but “actively participate and show interest” during events. “There are no other conditions,” Afanasii said.
A busy itinerary appeared in the chat four days before departure. The travelers would be accommodated in a four-star hotel in a northern Moscow neighborhood and would visit the Skolkovo Innovation Center, a high-tech business park that hosts IT companies affiliated with the Russian government. Next, there were trips to Red Square and city parks, and a culinary master class at a Moscow restaurant.
Participants were promised a “meeting with an expert” on the third day of the trip.
Social media posts by the organizers and multiple participants confirm that Aleksei Samoilov, a former weightlifter and Kharkiv-based academic who has questioned Ukrainian statehood, was among the speakers who addressed the young foreigners. Samoilov leads a pro-Russian movement called “Other Ukraine” and has argued that “Ukraine doesn’t have its own nation.”
Members of Shor’s Kremlin-friendly Shor Party backed anti-government protests last year that Sandu alleged were being fomented by Russia even before she accused Moscow of more direct destabilization efforts through a coup plot that has never been detailed publicly.
A resulting ban on the Shor Party was eventually overturned by Moldova’s Constitutional Court, but Shor has since moved on to the Pobeda alliance, which includes the Revival party, often described as a Shor “clone party.”
A presidential election in Moldova has been scheduled for October 20 with a simultaneous referendum on eventual accession to the European Union, which granted Moldova candidate status alongside Ukraine in June 2022.