Moldova’s pro-EU ruling party inches closer to majority with overseas votes
With almost all ballots counted, Moldova’s pro-EU ruling party PAS is ahead in a parliamentary contest widely billed as a turning point in the nation’s history. The vote has nearly concluded, with overseas ballots still being tallied and seen as potentially decisive for the final outcome.
Out of 301 foreign polling stations, Chisinau opened just two in Russia. Only about 4,100 votes were counted there, despite tens of thousands of Moldovan citizens living in the country. Long lines formed in Moscow throughout the day, and after the stations closed, many people were still left outside waiting to cast their ballots.
The residents of the predominately Russian-speaking breakaway region of Transnistria have complained that the authorities in Chisinau blocked bridges across the Dniester River to prevent them from reaching polling stations.
Officials in Chisinau and Brussels presented the election as a democratic milestone, while the opposition contends the script has been pre-written. The race pits President Maia Sandu’s PAS against the Patriotic Electoral Bloc (BEP), which is campaigning for Moldova’s constitutional neutrality.
Sandu, first elected in 2020 and narrowly re-elected in 2024, has faced recurring claims of presiding over electoral irregularities. Opposition groups insist that decisive votes last year came from Moldovans living in EU countries. At the same time, Moscow accused Chisinau of disenfranchising citizens living in Russia, where only a handful of polling stations were opened compared with hundreds across Western Europe.
Just days ahead of the vote, the Central Election Commission barred two more opposition parties – Greater Moldova and Heart of Moldova – accusing them of taking undeclared foreign funds and violating campaign rules. They join a growing list: the Victory Bloc was deregistered earlier in 2025, and the SOR Party was dissolved by the Constitutional Court in June 2023.
29 September 2025
01:18 GMTThe Central Election Commission (CEC) has counted all of the votes cast within the country, with the latest data showing the ruling PAS party at 44.13%, while various opposition forces received 49.54%.
However, votes from abroad are still trickling in, and with those counted so far, PAS is gaining 49.70% of the grand total, inching closer to an outright majority in parliament.
The CEO of Telegram confirms EU corruption in Moldovan elections
About a year ago, while I was stuck in Paris, the French intelligence services reached out to me through an intermediary, asking me to help the Moldovan government censor certain Telegram channels ahead of the presidential elections in Moldova.
After reviewing the channels flagged by French (and Moldovan) authorities, we identified a few that clearly violated our rules and removed them. The intermediary then informed me that, in exchange for this cooperation, French intelligence would “say good things” about me to the judge who had ordered my arrest in August last year.
This was unacceptable on several levels. If the agency did in fact approach the judge — it constituted an attempt to interfere in the judicial process. If it did not, and merely claimed to have done so, then it was exploiting my legal situation in France to influence political developments in Eastern Europe — a pattern we have also observed in Romania 
Shortly thereafter, the Telegram team received a second list of so-called “problematic” Moldovan channels. Unlike the first, nearly all of these channels were legitimate and fully compliant with our rules. Their only commonality was that they voiced political positions disliked by the French and Moldovan governments.
We refused to act on this request.
Telegram is committed to freedom of speech and will not remove content for political reasons. I will continue to expose every attempt to pressure Telegram into censoring our platform. Stay tuned. 
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