Garvan Walshe is a former national and international security policy adviser to the Conservative Party
On Sunday Moldovans voted in a referendum that would make seeking to join the EU part of the country’s constitution. They voted in favour, by the tiniest of margins.
Tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands were paid to vote against. They were paid, sometimes in cash, sometimes through direct transfers into their bank accounts, by Russia, because for countries once subject to the Soviet empire, EU membership is not a matter of joining a trading bloc, but of securing their independence from their former colonial power.
It was a battle in Putin’s war to reestablish Russian domination of Eastern Europe, which Russia wages by all means available to it: from nuclear threats, though conventional war, down to paying trolls to flood social media accounts with their propaganda; and which much of the West has joined half heartedly.
Next week Georgia votes, as does Bulgaria, followed the week afterwards by the second round of the Moldovan presidential elections in which the pro-Western incumbent Maia Sandu faces a run-off.
I won’t in this case get too far into the specifics. Just a few words on the differences: Bulgaria, from where I’m writing this column, is in the EU. Moldova and Georgia are applying.
Russian troops occupy part of Moldova and Georgia, but only have direct access to Georgian territory. Ukraine, decidedly unfriendly to Russian invaders, blocks their access to Moldova.
Georgia has a pro-Western president, but the pro-Russian business figure Bidzina Ivanishvili is arbiter of its politics. Moldova’s analogue is Ilan Shor – but he’s out of power – in exile escaping corruption charges, and limited to funnelling money into Moldovans’ bank accounts from Moscow.
Bulgarian informal power is more diffuse and constrained by the European Public Prosecutor’s office, which prevents corrupt local officials ensuring investigations into the well connected are kicked into the long grass. Still, the country’s main media mogul leads one of the parties that brought down the last government because he didn’t want to enact anti-corruption legislation.
All three countries are vulnerable to Kremlin corruption subversion, which comes in three varieties. First, they use propaganda to divide and demoralise people. As Peter Pomeranzev writes in his excellent This is not Propaganda,the aim is not to make people pro-Russian, but to undermine support for democratic institutions by presenting them as a sham.
Second, they support corrupt populists because they share an interest with the Kremlin in removing checks and balances to domestic corruption, including independent media, anti corruption watchdogs, restrictions on money laundering and so on.
Finally subvert the democratic process by buying votes, threatening opponents, and, if necessary promoting riots and coups d’etat to arrange for “the right people” to take power.
Russia’s strength here is its willingness to devote huge resources directly to its mission. It is estimated that it spent €100 million trying to buy the Moldovan referendum. The West has far more resources, but is unwilling to bring itself to spend them in the same way.
Instead we support the strengthening of institutions and the economy. Moldovan security forces have received huge support from Western states, from intelligence to training and equipment. European economic integration will also make Moldovans (and Georgians) richer.
It has already brought huge improvements to Bulgarian living standards; though the country is still poor, and vote buying goes on, it is now far too expensive for Russia to try direct mass bribery here.
We have also re-learned a lot about how the Russians operate. Bodies like the Hybrid Centre of Excellence in Helsinki have been crucial for understanding their tactics and disseminating knowledge to allies.
Yet, we still lack direct tools to counter the Kremlin’s political warfare. They provide their supporters with easy money, while ours have to scrabble for grants from foundations that constrain themselves from being too “political”.
And while there is considerable value in Radio Free Europe and the BBC World Service being real news services, not pro-western propaganda, we lack other pro-Western outlets able to marshal the right messages and keep pro-democratic and pro-Western journalists in countries threatened by Russian subversion in stable employment. They too need to spend disproportionate time fending off the voluminous paperwork that the European Commission, Open Society Foundations and even the FCDO require.
The Kremlin’s advantage is that focuses its money on anti-democratic political warfare. Though the free world’s general support for democratic institution building, and building “resilience” against authoritarian propaganda – something Taiwan and the Baltic States are particularly good at – is important, we also need to match Moscow’s political warfare directly.
This does not mean we should copy all Russia’s tactics exactly and bribe voters, but it does mean we need to step up our support for pro-democracy figures, organisations and media.
Yes the Kremlin will complain about “interference” but it has been a mistake to concede the point, as the debate over “foreign information manipulation and interference” does – where the problem should not be that it’s foreign (there’s no problem with the Labour Party sending Morgan McSweeny to the Democratic National Convention) but that it is information manipulation.
Our point of moral superiority over Russian political warfare should be the reasons and methods by which we engage in it — if we disarm ourselves by refusing to take part we risk losing, and leaving Georgians, Moldovans and other people in Russia’s sights defenceless against the corrupt and abusive autocrats to which the Kremlin funnels the money it steals from the Russian people.
