[Announcer] Gentlemen, the Moldova Security Forum 2026 is now resuming. We kindly ask you to take your seats and direct your attention to the stage.
[Host] Welcome back, dear friends, dear colleagues. Now I'd like to invite Radu Pociu from Aspen Institute Romania to moderate and introduce the next panel. Radu, please.
[Radu Pociu] Thank you. Thank you very much for this introduction. Well, it's never easy to have a session after the break, so yeah, be kind with us.
Well, yesterday we saw on the stage President Maia Sandu explaining very clearly, "This is a cognitive war. Its target is the mind of the citizen, of our citizens." And she called Moldova, I quote, "a laboratory for Russian electoral interference," and warned that this war is becoming more and more subtle.
Let me start the conversation today from a very concrete case, if you want. For an ordinary voter, picture it, a few days before the election. She wants what everybody wants: a good life, a future for the children, safety, peace, but a bill that she can afford, probably. She wants a simple choice, after all.
On the other side, as we noticed from the examples yesterday of President Sandu, from the room, from the conference examples that we have, we have a machine built to give her the simple answer: "Vote this way, and your life gets better." So, imagine the same voter, she hears it in a TikTok video made by someone who is real, is looking authentic. And she hears it again on Sunday from her priest, and because I saw the case related with the group of priests were taken to pay trips to Russia and so on.
So, when someone offers her money—and Moldovan police said they traced payments, and the examples were yesterday on the stage—she does not see the complexity for a simple voter; you don't notice it. So she sees the simplicity of the promise and the same message repeated all around the people she knows. And, ladies and gentlemen, I come to this, and this is my opening for this session and the proposal to all of you. It's the uncomfortable part because the battle is not fought in conferences like this one. We all know what's happening.
But it's fought in the space between this conference, the political speeches, the governmental communication, and what citizens actually see and hear every day. So the question I will invite our panelists today to answer is: how do we protect the citizen's freedom to choose when the forces shaping this choice are increasingly hidden? And also important, I believe, from this perspective is what do we offer to that voter? The other side is offering a simple promise. What do we put on the other side?
So, today, I want to go beyond this diagnosis we usually do in the conference rooms and more to examples, to real cases, and so on. So I'm pleased to have today with me, and I will invite to the stage, Mr. Stanislav Secrieru, National Security and Defense Advisor to the President of the Republic of Moldova. Please, give your applause. Mr. Alexandru Musteață, Director of Security and Intelligence Service of the Republic of Moldova. Thank you. Mr. Jan Latal, Information and Communication Officer, East StratCom Task Force, European External Action Service. Thank you. And Dr. Tamar Gamkrelidze, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, European Neighbours Chair, College of Europe. Tamar, thank you for coming. And last but not least, Mr. Jacob Hedenskog, Analyst of the Stockholm Center for Eastern European Studies. Thank you.
Well, as I pointed, let's start from the strategic picture. Because we saw that illicit finance, information manipulation, and institutional subversion were mentioned a few times today and yesterday. They are linked; they are not operating in separate spaces. So, my question to you, Mr. Secrieru, is what is the strategic objective, after all, of these operations? And how do you tell if an operation is succeeding, even if it does not change the election result? Because it's not all the time happening when the elections are coming; they are happening every day. So I'd like to hear your point of view. What is the point of all of this behind?
[Stanislav Secrieru] Yeah, first of all, I would like to thank you for the invitation and congratulate the organizers because this event, seeing how it grows over the last three years, became a really flagship event on security in the region, not only in Moldova. It's so good to see that the numbers of participants are growing and the quality of debate is improving.
Second thing, just to say one word maybe about the title of the panel because it's Hybrid Threats 2.0. From our experience watching how Russian hybrid threats evolve, it's a constantly adaptation game. You discover one way how they finance a political party or proxies involved in disinformation. You stop it, they come with another one. And I think in our case, we've stopped so many schemes that it would be more appropriate to say hybrid threats 9.0, but not 2.0 because it's an understatement.
Now, the illicit finances, FIMI, and institutional subversion. In this trio, I think illicit finances are playing the key role because without money, Russian hybrid operations don't have scale and will not have any effect. That's why for Russia, it's important to have illicit finances in order to be able to recruit human resources for hybrid operations.
Obviously, illicit finances are crucial for Russian information and manipulation operations because you have to pay for the infrastructure of this information. You have to pay coaches who train trolls, you have to pay trolls, you have to offer them bonuses. If Russia relies more on artificial intelligence, you have to pay a subscription for clouds in order to generate even more fake news. So you need money for this information.
And the nexus between illicit finances and disinformation, it's about subversion of institutions. Ahead of elections, the key institution is the Central Electoral Commission. And in this case, we have seen as well that Russia relied on artificial intelligence in order to produce fake videos targeting the members of the Central Electoral Commission, circulating fake letters, doing everything possible to discredit the activity of the Central Electoral Commission. And here I'm coming to the question about strategic objective.
Obviously, on the macro level, it's about shaping the perceptions of citizens about electoral processes. It's about perceptions whether this process is fair or not. It's about perception whether the outcome of elections is fair or not. So basically, money, information manipulation, it's about how people will perceive the outcome of elections.
Whether there is any indication if a Russian operation is successful or not, at least two indicators might be used. First, if the Russian operation managed to shrink the distance between candidates in order to create the impression that the result is so close, that society is deeply polarized. And the second element is if Russia manages to instill doubts whether the results of elections are accurate or not, whether there were interferences from the state in order to play with numbers or not. If Russia manages to create these impressions while losing elections—a pro-Russian candidate doesn't—it still helps them to use it in the operations which will come after elections, because Russian hybrid doesn't stop at the day of elections. They will continue after elections, and it somehow brings them into this bridging the outcome of elections into the next hybrid operations wave. I think I will stop here.
[Radu Pociu] Yeah, because just a quick follow-up on your answer, there is also an agility, and we saw separate events being used as a wider campaign. So, on one hand, yeah, there is a strategy behind, but it's very agile when it comes to isolating probably non-important things that become like and used like a fire. Do you have such examples from your experience?
[Stanislav Secrieru] I think I will stay with the Central Electoral Commission. When there was a letter circulated which was targeting one member of the Electoral Commission, you stay and maybe it's an isolated case. But when you see a fake video, when you see other activities going, when you see Russian proxies questioning the objectivity of the Central Electoral Commission, you understand that it's a campaign. You put the puzzle and understand that they try to delegitimize the activity of the Central Electoral Commission and to make people believe that these elections will not be fair and free.
[Radu Pociu] So the strategic objective is to make a lot of doubt, to implement, to infuse a lot of doubt in everything around.
[Stanislav Secrieru] It's about trust. If you undermine trust, it's very difficult to sustain democracy.
[Radu Pociu] Okay, thank you very much. And having this strategic purpose in mind, let us look, and I will invite Mr. Musteață to join us. What is the machinery behind it and how do you make this possible? Because I know what you can share publicly because there are many things you cannot. But how does illicit financing become political influence in practice? Because it sounds to many people like an abstract thing. Okay, there's something happening in a parallel universe, but it's real. And how do you do it? How does this work, after all? And it's a curiosity on one hand from what you can share because you have a good look on that. But also, how do you make it practical? How do you influence in practice this? I mean, it's a very interesting case to see. Thank you.
[Alexandru Musteață] Thank you for the invitation, and I think the fact that we are talking about the security of Moldova and the region in Chișinău is a good achievement for the organizers of this event because I was a speaker at different similar events outside Moldova talking about Moldova. So it's good that we are bringing the expertise here.
I will follow up on what Stanislav already said about the fact that everything you do in terms of interference into the electoral process, into a democratic process, into the government activity daily and try to influence a country, try to divert a country from its path, is about money. You need to pay.
Back in the days, I don't know, 20 years ago, 25, 30 years ago, we would talk about ideology, Russian language, Soviet past. It was a lot about ideology. Today, and we assessed that several times in the last few years, ideology plays a less role. So the money replaced the ideology.
We were assessing the protest capacity in Moldova, just to see if that can go to a violent process or not. This is something we are always checking, and it's standard procedure. And we have seen that now, after we had so many years when the protesters were paid to go on the street and to be there and just to be accounted for, they don't want to go to protest without being paid again. So a democratic process, which is protesting—again, this is a democratic instrument of the citizens—became a business for some of them. So money plays an important role in the entire process.
Now, the illicit financing, and this is something we have been investigating and talking about for the last three years, become very complex. Even in the past, having shell companies in different jurisdictions, you are hiding it between different transactions. You are splitting one transaction into 10, and then you put them together merging in another account and so on. That implies companies, banks that are operating in a legal environment. Today we have crypto, and crypto is still under-regulated in the entire world. In Moldova, we are still working on a regulation; hopefully, it's going to be there soon to regulate the crypto market, the existing and circulation of crypto. However, in different other countries, it is regulated in a way as to be used as an instrument to hide the trail of money, to avoid sanctions, to buy stuff that usually you would not be allowed to buy if you want to transfer the money through the standard banking system.
Unfortunately, the instrument that Russia developed, well, not Russia, a Moldovan who is a convicted criminal and should stay in prison in Moldova, Ilan Shor, developed an instrument in the interest of Russia to bring the money from Russia to Moldova in order to influence the electoral process in 2023, 2024, and 2025. Today, it has become a global phenomenon. And I think many of you have seen the articles that were published recently and the sanctions that came along about how huge that network A7 became. And I think it's something that we were ringing the bell three years ago, today became a really big problem, and the cooperation between the different institutions is critical in making sure that we can counter this.
So money is behind everything. As Stanislav said, you need to pay the people, you need to buy equipment, you need to pay offices, you need to buy technologies or software to conduct all this activity. And it's really costly activity.
In the entire process, you have disinformation, it's paid. It's really paid through different means. We have investigated that, we have proved that, and disinformation that is happening in Moldova and Russian propaganda that's happening in Moldova now is paid by Russia using the same instruments that I just mentioned. To conduct what we would call sabotage activity or kinetic activity that is now again raising throughout entire Europe, it implies money. There is a recruiter, in quotation marks recruiter, behind the screen who is recruiting low-level agents in exchange for from 50 euros up to a few thousand euros for different tasks. So that's again, money.
To conduct cyber attacks, cyber attacks are a very costly activity. So you need money to pay the same team of experts, hackers, whatever we can call them. You need equipment, and today you use the AI for the cyber attacks. So the cyber attacks become more complex and more complicated to investigate and to fight with, meaning that they are investing a lot of money. That's why illicit financing, that's why the "follow the money" principle is something we have been repeating for the last three years. Follow the money and you will see the perpetrator. Following the money, you can attribute who is behind these campaigns. And also, following the money, you can identify the network, the coordinators, the executors, and so on.
And then, human sources, something that we would call "humint" sources, that's people recruited to conduct or to act in the interest of a foreign power, in this case, Russia, they need to be paid. And they are not cheap. The prices went up. We were monitoring how much people are paid to conduct what they do, despite it's info or other area. The money they are asking is going up. So they understand the risks. So the higher the risks are, the higher the price they ask goes.
In the info space, I want to go back to this, it's important. You ask how it's happening, how it can be done. It's something that we called psychological warfare. It's not during an electoral campaign only, as Stanislav already mentioned. It didn't start three months before the election and stop the next day. It's a continuous process.
Psychological warfare implies very small, targeted narratives that are repeated every day through different channels in small scale, large scale, big, complex, simple campaigns, just to infuse into a society, in this case, Moldova, the distrust to institutions. And it's not about the fact that people believe that something bad is really happening in that institution; they just don't trust it. To bring the seed of an idea that there is another way, and maybe not the European way is the best, and this is another narrative we are seeing now being infused. In order to prepare the society for a decision to be made later on during an electoral process. So the psychological warfare that is a continuous process happens even now. If we would go online, there is a list of Telegram channels we can go on screen, you will see how it's happening.
And this is daily, and our citizens on different platforms, being that Telegram or TikTok or even Facebook, they are exposed to that. Now, I have to say that it's not only someone who studied IT or someone who studied finance is doing that. There are psychologists behind it. There are people specialized in how to influence the psychology of mass. And a few words about the fact that many events are happening randomly, and they are small, not related, and so on. That's a bit of theory of chaos, if we can say. A bunch of unrelated events, chaotically distributed, but if you start looking, investigating, linking them together, you can see the pattern. And when you see the pattern, you see it's a proper campaign. Thank you.
[Radu Pociu] Of course, money can sustain the network, but for that network to influence people, to get the messages to be real, let's say, they need to travel and often appear authentic. And I will move to Mr. Latal asking, when a coordinated influence operation enters the everyday information environment, what helps us distinguish it from genuine public debate? Because this is the space we are talking about. And which intervention points matter most before it gains momentum? You have this field in front of you. What is real, what is not real, what is a genuine public debate, and what is a hidden agenda behind it? So, thank you.
[Jan Latal] Thank you. For first of all, thanks for inviting me to this conference. It's actually really great to see how the forum is evolving and developing, and I think it's also a testimony to the Moldovan achievements in the field of security and resilience. So, really a pleasure to be here.
Now, to your question, or two questions rather. In terms of what helps to distinguish the genuine debate from the information operation, I think the best way to tell FIMI from the genuine debate is probably to look on the inauthentic behavior side of the distribution and the amplification. And more specifically, on the participation of the sort of well-established infrastructure networks that are known to advance pro-Kremlin interests. And because, you know, the infrastructure is not endless, and it's been established, it has grown some audience, so the patterns are there. So seeing part of this well-known pro-Russian ecosystem taking part in the debate or amplification, I think it's already a good indicator that there is more than a genuine debate taking place. And that's also why it's so important to keep on mapping these networks and updating the information and connecting the dots because there are channels and websites and outlets appearing every day or, you know, showing their true colors like, you know, two, three weeks before the elections that they indeed are part of the wider ecosystem.
Now, when it comes to the message itself, and it's the easier one would be when the seed information is sort of apparently made up, it's sort of a nonsense, and we've seen that over and over, usually meant to smear a particular leader or, you know, actor. You know, secret illnesses, drugs, lovers, you name it, villas in Provence, all these things that are obviously false and being amplified. In that case, probably often better not to react all that much because you see all these "maskirovka" and Storm-1516 networks sort of crying for attention by tagging everyone. So that's one thing.
Then, I think the lines are much more blurred when there indeed is a sort of a genuine opinion or a grievance at the center, and then it's being, you know, amplified inauthentically. And, you know, we shouldn't be surprised by that. Like Russia and other FIMI actors are very opportunistic, so they would indeed, you know, thrive on the divisions, on our, you know, mistakes and goals that we make, and then, you know, go for exploiting this opportunity. And also, like all the main pro-Russian narratives are out there already, so every now and then there would be someone who repeats them, so it's always easy to put them back in the circulation. But still, the inauthentic part is important to follow.
Now, quickly on the intervention points that you asked about. I'd say a few quick recommendations. One, raising the bar or meaning work on the prevention side of things. So contest the information space, you know, don't let the adversary to occupy it, to define what is the vulnerability. Work with the partners, build your networks, produce the content, and, you know, raise the awareness among the population and, you know, be open about the vulnerabilities that are real and, you know, let it be you defining the problems rather than someone else. And also, you know, build the awareness about the hostile actors and tactics that are being used because if you do that, then there's a sort of good chance that a big part of the information attacks, you know, wouldn't really spill into the mainstream and then wouldn't reach that far.
Second, situational awareness. You know, have a monitoring system that enables you to detect the weak signals, the initial alerts, and have a sort of response system ready for such situations. Because if you do that and if you are able to detect the attack when it, you know, starts or emerges, then, you know, there's some kind of a window of opportunity where you could actually limit the impact quite significantly by sort of proactively going out there and whatever, make a quote of a public official, put out a specific content that would be already in the information space when this, you know, campaign reaches the key level and before it actually gets picked up by main media. And, you know, if there's a good case for it, go for the takedowns with the trusted flaggers. You know, be it impersonation of somebody else, be it, you know, hate speech or, you know, incitement to violence, there's good reasons for taking these posts out of the information space.
And then, maybe lastly, if you are able to observe and detect the network, then expose it. It may not necessarily work on the given day or the given campaign, but it's I think still important to like establish the facts at the end of the day and and then, you know, make sure that the next time when, you know, these particular actors, networks, outlets will be used in another operation, you know, the word will already be out there and for the next time, this should this should limit the impact. Thank you.
[Radu Pociu] Thank you. We had until now, we understand the purpose, we understand how they work, and you have a clear view on that, and the recommendations are from a common sense, not only an analytical point of view, they are true. Once you see it, you expose it, once you monitor everything and look at it. But this operation, we saw that they encounter existing grievances, identities, institutions, so it's very related with the context, not operating in a bubble. So this condition shapes their impact. So they're very much aligned with the context, with the local institutions, with the local grievances as I said. And I move to Dr. Gamkrelidze, drawing on your research on Georgia, how can external interference become embedded in domestic political life? And what warning signs suggest that institutions are beginning to reproduce that influence themselves? Because sometimes that happens, as we saw. Thank you.
[Tamar Gamkrelidze] First of all, thank you for the invitation and thank you for the question. And before answering it, I will give a brief context of the research, and in this way, I will give a credit to my colleagues who invested more than me in this research, which is undertaken within the framework of a REUNION project funded by the European Commission under the Horizon Europe program. And indeed, we focus on external influence by malign actors. And I'm hearing here that most of the speakers, they focus on Russia. And while analyzing external influence by malign actors, we looked at and analyzed malign actors which are quite diverse, and it includes Russia, China, Iran, Turkey, some Gulf states that influence candidate countries in Western Balkans (Western Balkan Six) and Eastern Neighbourhood Trio in order to stall European integration.
And even though these malign actors are very diverse, and one might say that you can't really put these countries in one basket and they are incomparable, they have one target. It is a liberal democratic order and norm alignment between EU and candidate countries in order to stall European integration. So this geopolitical contestation by malign actors with the EU over candidate countries structures both external interference and its embeddedness into domestic politics. It actually shapes the trajectory, pace, and quality of democratic reforms while also determining the channels through which external actors use in order to influence domestic politics. And some external influences are rapid and visible, however, some of them are they take a long time and take place covertly with signs that may be limited or seemingly benign.
And external actors, they change strategies, they adapt to a certain degree their strategies based on domestic context, but also general developments at a global level, mostly technological ones. And however, primarily, they deploy two types of strategies. The first is geopolitical interference and destabilization in candidate countries, and the second is cultural and religious diplomacy. Both of them stall or affect democratic reform, and they take different shapes, they manifest themselves differently depending on domestic context.
In this context, Russia, for instance, which is a main player in both of the regions, in the Western Balkans and Eastern Neighbourhood, they Russia primarily relies on political destabilization and interference. It combines different tools: media capture, vote-buying network, support for pro-Russian parties, support for separatists, followed by exploitation of frozen conflict. Moreover, the Kremlin works through sympathetic domestic actors, proxies, in order to spread anti-Western narrative.
In this case, China, which is another key player, primarily pursues a long-term strategy of elite-level cooperation, and we categorized this as elite capture and normative influence. And through strategic partnership, governance cooperation, China promotes digital authoritarian governance model and weakens EU's normative appeal without direct contestation or without direct conflict.
So subsequent effects and signs of external influence, they diverge. However, the most common of them is that external influence, it intensifies political polarization, complicates European integration, weakens institutional resilience, but also encourages alternative governance and developmental models in candidate countries. And Georgia in this case is an extreme case where state institutions, which is captured by one party, the Georgian Dream party, and its chairman, Ivanishvili, with the money that has Russian origins, align their narrative with the Kremlin to such a degree that it raises questions of political agency of the current government. But there are also signs of alignment with the Chinese-style digital authoritarian governance through surveillance mechanisms used to fine and punish protesters, also through information control mechanisms using administrative and regulatory practices to monitor and restrict freedom of expression online and social media.
These listed examples are actually the visible ones, but there are also strategies that are less visible, unfold gradually, take a certain period of time, and such is cultural and religious diplomacy. And in this case, malign actors, they use structurally different but comparable tools: cultural institutions, religious institutions, education exchanges, heritage promotion, in order to shape societal attitudes, but also cultivate networks at a local level that align with their geopolitical preferences. In this context, Russia mobilizes the Russian Orthodox Church and the doctrine of "Russkiy Mir" in order to align the religious institution with its geopolitical objectives, but also reinforce pro-authoritarian narrative and intensify societal polarization.
China relies on educational exchange, elite seminars, study visits in order to cultivate pro-China networks but also diffuse norms aligned with its authoritarian developmental model. In this case, Turkey, Iran, some Gulf states, they deploy mosque construction, religious education, in order to form public opinion, strengthen ties with certain local elites, but also entrench their geopolitical presence in both of the regions, in the Western Balkans and Eastern Neighbourhood.
And in general, democratic outcome is very much sensitive to external interference and broad external environment and in particular external shocks such as uncertainty, security uncertainty, war in Ukraine, US disengagement, EU membership prospects, because they may constrain deeper democratic change. But democratic outcome is also very much sensitive to securitization, which is right now is happening, securitization of the normative democratic agenda because it alters the logic, meaning, and application of democratic standards, and in this case, deviation from democratic standards may be tolerated or justified if it's framed as necessary for security, which may ultimately result to its gradual erosion.
[Radu Pociu] I saw it as a very practical example. People, the people's grievances are real. I mean, people are not saying, "Look, I'm unhappy with one policy or what's happening on the society right now." And you cannot say as an institution, "Look, this is a foreign narrative pushed through different channels and I'm not going to listen to that," because it's real. So, how do you make as an institution the difference? Because you want to be democratic on one hand to listen, you realize that it's part of a broader narrative and influence. So, how do you keep this balance? Because I see it as a very big challenge in our societies.
[Tamar Gamkrelidze] Um, I unfortunately, I can't really give you that practical tool, how you can, how you can do that. It's only something that we in academia have as a guidelines that malign actors will be always there to exploit genuine domestic grievances. And the existence of external exploitation of the grievances doesn't make citizens holding those grievances the part of the threat.
So the key here is to address those grievances, talk with the citizens, and kind of try to distinguish the grievance from external influence, make the response proportionate, keep the, if there are not channels for deliberation, open the channels for deliberation, and keep, maintain those channels for political expression open constantly. And most importantly, avoid reproducing the very dynamics that external malign actors are using because heavy-handed approach towards protest, towards opposition, only damages the situation and it intensifies polarization, intensifies distrust towards state institutions and democratic institutions.
[Radu Pociu] Yeah, talking about that because we were looking at a response and a durable response, not only because it's a common challenge, but you also have to find the instruments and look for a durable response, as I would say. And I'll move to Mr. Hedenskog looking across the region, which reforms would most effectively break the connection between the illicit financing, information manipulation, and institutional subversion? Where does this national action depend on cooperation across borders? Because you look at it very deeply.
[Jacob Hedenskog] Thank you. And thanks for the question, thanks for inviting me, and also congratulations to the organizers. First, I have to admit I'm not an expert in this particular topic. I'm a more generalist Eastern European expert. Having said that, then after having made some little research, I've been I've identified some challenges but also some recommendations how to solve these problems. The first challenge is the weak global standards. Only the UN Convention Against Corruption serves as a global instrument, and that yet it lacks sufficient detail. Legislative gaps, ambiguous definitions, and a lack of transparency regarding beneficial ownership, the allowance of anonymous and foreign donations, and inadequate regulation of third parties.
Third, the insufficient oversight and enforcement. Many regulatory bodies lack clear mandates, resources, and independence. Cooperation between agencies and across borders is often weak. Fourth, digitalization and globalization is, of course, another challenge. The increased use of digital platforms and social media in election campaigns creates new opportunities for illicit financing and foreign interference. And legislation has failed to keep pace with these developments. And fifth, illicit financing and organized crime. Criminal networks use political financing to buy influence and launder money, particularly in countries with high campaign costs and weak institutions.
So my recommendations are, and these are also five, more legislative reforms to introduce limits on donations, ban anonymous and foreign contributions, and implement strict reporting requirements. Second, digital reporting systems to enhance digital platforms for reporting and disclosing data on political financing. And third, use the of AI to analyze and flag suspicious transactions and improve real-time oversight. Fourth, to strengthen the role of civil society in monitoring and analyzing political donations and links to public procurement, to strengthen independent oversight bodies, and introduce proportionate sanctions. And fifth, strengthen cooperation between institutions such as electoral authorities, tax authorities, and the judiciary.
So there are many things that can be done, and of course, since adversaries often hide behind national borders to execute these hybrid strategies, national regulatory efforts prove insufficient without seamless mechanisms to cross-border cooperation. Thank you.
[Radu Pociu] I was wondering if you can choose one reform, what would it be?
[Jacob Hedenskog] Yeah, I think the legislative reforms. I think that the previous elections here in Moldova, the parliamentary elections last year and the presidential elections the year before showed the importance of legislative reform because within the year between those elections, there were a lot of updating of the reforms, and also, of course, the Moldovan authorities were much more prepared the second time than the first time. And legislative reform is nothing that is, I mean, it's not finished. It has to be constantly updated to the changes of society.
[Radu Pociu] Thank you so much. We have some time, so if there are questions from the room at any time, and you can use the Slido mechanism also, we'll see them on the screen, so I encourage people to question whenever you feel like. We've made quite an overview starting from Moldova, from public institutions, but also to what's really happening. And coming back, if Moldova is a laboratory, as Mr. President said yesterday, how it's also a laboratory for solutions. So switching back to what can we do for using these cases and learning from them. So I'll move to Mr. Secrieru, asking, we use this example of real grievances, and if a manipulation campaign builds on real failures of the government, exposing the campaign will not remove the grievance. I mean, saying that, "Okay, this is a campaign," doesn't necessarily mean the people are wrong. So they are right about what they're complaining about. How should security institutions and public authorities divide the response? Because I think it's a very fine line here, and I'm curious how do you look at it? Because, once again, you have it's an unequal fight, but you have to fight by the rules, and it's not an easy one, not an easy choice. Thank you.
[Stanislav Secrieru] Look, I think we have to make the distinction. It's not for security institutions to address the nature of grievances. They can be of a social nature, of economic nature, and it's up to the civilian institutions to adjust policies, public policies, to fine-tune the social policies, economic policies, to make reforms. And the most important thing is to communicate what kind of adjustments are made in order to address the grievances and to have this dialogue with the society.
I think the effect of people spending too much time online is the disconnection between citizens. And in addition to finding solutions, I think institutions and government have to find the ways how to reconnect people back and how to invest in the more active citizens who are part of a community, contribute to charity, contribute to various projects, and feel that they are part of a community.
On the security side, what is important for institutions is that these grievances are not exploited by a foreign power. And here, it's important whether the foreign powers are trying to recruit people who are profoundly dissatisfied based on the real grievances and to engage in illegal activities against its own state. If grievances are exploited to recruit a person to conduct sabotage activities, it's already a problem for security institutions. It's to look at the result of these grievances and how these grievances are exploited.
If the person is exploited to vandalize a public building or to engage in disinformation in exchange for money, it's already a security problem. This grievance becomes a security problem. If the person is dissatisfied and offers its skills to conduct cyberattacks, this is not anymore a problem of grievance, but how this grievance is exploited. So this is where the role for security sector is to monitor, to discover, and ideally, to prevent it. The civilian side, how to address it, I mean, it's about public policies and how to work with citizens and how to make them part of the local communities. It's outside the responsibility of the security sector.
[Radu Pociu] Of course, of course. Thank you so much. Please.
[Rufin Zamfir] Thank you so much. Rufin Zamfir here. So, we've been discussing about illicit financing, and there's also, you know, the gray zone subsidizing measures that Russia is taking, especially in the Gagauzia and Transnistrian region. And it was again already discussed that this illicit finance should be regarded as an investment that the Russians are doing. And we know already that an investment needs to generate return on investment. And we know that the Moldovan authorities already documented that the sum that the Russians invested in parliamentary elections in 2025 is almost five times larger than the one that they've invested in the previous parliamentary elections. And I was wondering, have we, do we have an estimate of the threshold beyond which it's not going to be feasible for Russia to invest? Do we have an estimate regarding when we will make it too costly for Russians to invest into derailing Moldova's democracy? And if we do have this estimate, are we close to it? Do we have measures on our strategy that will move, you know, the clock towards this? Thank you.
[Stanislav Secrieru] Look, our perspective is that we need to make any Russian attempt to invest as many billion dollars as they can invest useless. We will never calculate how much Russia has to spend so that they will reach the limit and beyond that limit they cannot go. For us, it's important that whatever is the sum of money Russia is investing in the hybrid operations in Moldova, it doesn't have the desired effect.
And it means that we have, and I cannot agree more with Tamar, we have a profound societal resilience where people see things, they can critically analyze what they see, and they can make the decisions which are good for what they think is good for their society. We have institutions at such a level capable to discover early enough what Russia does and to prevent things which Russia plans to do. If we are able to have the combination of two—the profound societal resilience and institutions having all the instruments they need, the legislation they need, the equipment they need to stay ahead of Russia—this is would be for us the good response to any kind of investments Russia tries to make by bringing illicit finances to our country.
[Alexandru Musteață] Just to add a few points on this. From a service perspective, we don't set thresholds, especially when it comes to Russia because they don't act in a classic economic or financial mindset. We don't set the threshold because this will limit our own capacity. We'll think, "Okay, this is the target, we have to achieve this, and then can relax." The moment you relax, you're done. And this is something we have to be very careful with.
I don't have any threshold. We will not set the threshold. We don't think they have a threshold. However, every action they do should be brought to the top of any costs. We should, exactly as Stanislav said, we should make it really, really hard and costly to do. That's why sanctions are important. Sanctions, despite the entire debate that we have now about the efficiency and effectiveness of the sanctions, they do work because especially of this: they raise the costs for Russia to interfere. They raise the cost for the Russian state to exist, to conduct its activity, to export, to buy equipment for the missiles and drones, to pay the individuals.
Ten years ago, they would do a wire transfer from a Russian bank to a Moldovan bank to the bank accounts of the individual. That's it. Easy. I don't know, 50 euro bank fee. Now, you have to go half of the globe: crypto, different jurisdictions, shell companies, and everyone is taking a part of it. And then someone is taking another part as corruption, but that's their own problem back home. So supposedly 1,000 euros 10 years ago, today is maybe two, maybe 3,000, we don't know exactly because it's really hard to estimate because of the whole complexity of the system they are building to avoid sanctions. So sanctions are helping on raising the costs. Thank you.
[Radu Pociu] Thank you. We have a question and the last one taken from the public. Telegram is wisely used for spreading disinformation, false information, and targeting public officials. Why is it still used, not only in Moldova, why is it still used here? And this brings me to the very heart of what we discussed because we see more and more this narrative, "Okay, if this channel is used, let's close it." And you have a very difficult, once again, decision in front of you. Are we democratic institutions closing a channel that also is used for just exchanging messages, normal messages and so on, just because it's used for... So it's a hard line, but I keep on hearing, "Why don't you close those accounts? Why don't you intervene brutally and as China is pushing towards, let's be more authoritarian in this chaos?" What is the choice? Why don't you close it? Who wants to... but it's a general question for everybody, so who wants to join first? The courageous people.
[Stanislav Secrieru] Telegram is not all about disinformation. Telegram is a platform which Russia uses to recruit different types of services. So when we look at the Telegram, it's not only about disinformation, it's about recruiting people to conduct sabotage attacks. It's about people who are sending via chatbot their personal data to get the bank account opened in Russia and then, in exchange, to receive money. So Telegram is not only about communication, it's a platform which gives Russia and facilitates Russian hybrid operations.
Now, closed, not closed. The thing is that you can focus on running after Russia and try to close things, or you focus on your own strategic communication, on your own messages, what you want to be the main message to your population. And I think from our experience, we found out that instead of running after Russian disinformation on Telegram, we'd rather would focus on our strategic communication and strategic communication which goes beyond what government communicates. And here I go back to civil society and resilience because you cannot counter Russian hybrid attacks without civil society being involved, without independent mass media being involved.
But the thing is, and the beauty of democracy is that civil society and independent mass media don't receive orders from institutions. They are engaging in countering Russian hybrid attacks only when they believe that they share the same values with the government which is in power. They do organize the activities autonomously, but as a whole, in synchrony, we were doing the same job. Here, you have investigative journalists who didn't ask a permission, didn't inform, they've conducted the investigative journalistic activities, and they revealed how Russia was working here. And the fact that it was revealed several weeks, days before elections, it had a powerful impact as well. You have civil society exposing Russian disinformation, explaining people why it's not good to sell your vote, and by selling your vote, you sell your country.
So all this in combination, activities of state institutions explaining how beneficial is European integration, but also independent journalists, civil society doing their work, helped to offset the advantage which Russia had on Telegram or on other platforms. So I think that the focus should be not so much on what we can close and Telegram doesn't cooperate, but how we behave, how we communicate, how we choose to push our messages. It's not only through press releases, it's involving as well opinion makers, singers, athletes who can reach to wider segments of your society. And the issue of social platforms obviously will not be solved in Moldova and by Moldova. The issue is so big that we need a collective effort how we organize regulations and how rules are enforced on the social platforms. But again, it goes much beyond the capacity of Moldova to set the trend here.
[Jan Latal] And if I would just maybe quickly follow up on what was said, that, you know, the grievances. And indeed, this is a primarily policy first response, so the communication cannot replace the absence of policies. So indeed, you know, the governments and people in power and in position to influence the policy need indeed to go out, listen to people, react, and make them make them part of the process, engage with them so that, you know, they believe their legitimate issues are addressed.
And again, I think like Moldova has been doing quite quite well in this regard, and even the last parliamentary elections, I think, was a good example when there is a coherence between the messaging and the actions. A sort of EU offer backed up by specific steps, that's when it becomes possible to deliver the message and, you know, change change people's perception.
I would also maybe not aware of any sort of support being withdrawn from the EU DisinfoLab. You know, we've been cooperating with them for a long time, so it's quite difficult to comment on this particular case. But just also looking at the question above that about the blurred lines of between the freedom of speech and, you know, what we discussed. And again, I think that in that case, looking at the inauthentic aspects of the information spread, it's what can actually quite effectively distinguish the, you know, or protect the freedom of speech. And, you know, everybody's entitled to have its own opinions, but then when these opinions are suddenly, you know, artificially amplified and simultaneously distributed across, you know, a number of languages and across all the platforms, then it stops being an honest opinion or a genuine opinion of a particular person, but it became indeed an information operation. And so I think there can the distinction can be done in that way at least.
[Radu Pociu] Thank you. We have some some minutes left, and I want to to end with a common question to all of you. I started with the example of the voter who sees these individual messages but not necessarily the connections between them, once again. And our discussion somehow explored what it takes to make this connection visible, as you mentioned, act on them lawfully, you mentioned, and address the vulnerabilities that allow them to grow. I hear this word on how important is to be present, and how important is to communicate, how important is the community, and how important to preserve this freedom of choice. A very powerful message.
Thank you. Thank you all. Thank you so much for this wonderful conversation. I feel very much happy about the things on. And in the Aspen Institute style, I hope the audience leaves the room with more questions than answers because reflecting on the hard decisions that we face as a society as well as individuals is very important. Thank you so much, in your applause. Thank you.
[Host] Thank you. Thank you very much, Radu. Thank you, the panelists. Thank you to the Aspen Institute. Now from hybrid threats, we will move to the backbone of building trust and democratic resilience. We'll talk about behavioral insights and how that would contribute to social cohesion. That panel will be moderated here in this plenary hall by Birgitta from Konrad Adenauer Stiftung. And in the parallel session, the second session will be dedicated to Russia. We will look into Russia's playbook in a plenary, in a parallel session discussed organized together with colleagues from GMF and ECFR. But for now, thank you very much for being with us. We'll have a break, and we'll be back at 2:00 sharp. Thank you.
