With the start of a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, one of the main characters of the fakes that are being planted and distributed through pro-Kremlin media, became Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky. Over the past three and a half years, the propaganda machine has developed several typical templates for such disinformation and collected data on which narratives evoke the greatest response from the audience.
Now the same methods have begun to be used against other foreign leaders who advocate the pro-Western development of their countries. In 2025, one of the main targets of such attacks was the President of Moldova, Maia Sandu - at the end of September, parliamentary elections will be held in the country, where several political forces, which are called pro-Russian, united against the pro-presidential party. “Verified” tells how a “fake factory” began to use technologies developed against Ukraine in Moldova.
Moldova stands on the threshold of historically important (so their described Sandu herself) elections. If the pro-presidential Action and Solidarity Party (PAS) can maintain majority in parliament, power in the country for several years (in November last year Sandu re-elected for a second term) will be consolidated in the hands of representatives of a political force advocating a pro-Western course. Accordingly, for the Kremlin, the parliamentary elections on September 28 are even more important than last year’s presidential elections - this is the last chance to slow down Moldova’s European integration in the coming years. If PAS loses its majority, EU accession negotiations could well be frozen, despite the president's position. Much the same process as before started in Georgia.
At the same time, several parties at once, which called pro-Russian, a single bloc was formed for parliamentary elections. into it entered The Socialist Party led by former President Igor Dodon, the Republican Party “Heart of Moldova”, the Party “Future of Moldova” and the Party of Communists. “We stand for the restoration of strategic ties with Russia. We want peace, not war. Our bloc will put an end to foreign interests and NATO,” stated Dodon at a press conference dedicated to the presentation of the block.
Discrediting Sandu will cast a shadow on her party, which means it will help the pro-Russian bloc improve its results in the elections. In PAS surveys takes leading position, but about a quarter of Moldovan voters have not yet decided which political force to give preference to.
Personal attacks
If Vladimir Zelensky’s pro-Russian resources regularly accused drug addiction, then Maia Sandu is accused of schizophrenia. First time such a fake thrown in back in October 2024, shortly before the first round of the presidential election. Then Telegram channels and the media distributed a photograph of a medical report allegedly issued to Sandu at the Vienna Döbling clinic. The document turned out to be a fake, first published on a marginal Moldovan news resource that had not been updated for more than two years.
The return of this fake was timed to coincide with the current parliamentary elections. Documents allegedly from Döbling were again used as evidence, this time about what kind of treatment for schizophrenia Sand was prescribed. These documents too turned out to be fake (for example, judging by them, the President of Moldova simultaneously underwent treatment in Vienna and met in Chisinau with the ambassadors of the UAE and Bulgaria).
Another “sin” of the unmarried and childless Sandu promoted in fake publications is her alleged homosexuality. This is why the politician allegedly promotes the “LGBT agenda” in his country. The main success of fake news in this topic was the story that Sandu allegedly spent $400,000 on the sperm of gay stars - Ricky Martin, Elton John and Neil Patrick Harris. The publication of the website was then used as evidence, mimicked under the tabloid OK! and created two days before the disinformation was spread.
Corruption and luxury shopping
Not only Zelensky himself, but also his wife Elena, who allegedly spends on cars, expensive clothes And other luxury items millions of euros (if you follow this logic, received from your husband). Propaganda spreads a similar narrative about Sanda, who allegedly hides illegally obtained income through the mediation of her mistress.
Telegram channels in spring published a video with the BBC logo, which tells: according to the Bellingcat investigative project, the politician has been in a relationship since 2010 with a certain Luminza Mărculescu, with whom she studied at the School of Government. Kennedy at Harvard University. It is reported that since Sandu became president, Mărculescu's fortune has grown by almost $24 million, she has acquired a villa and other real estate in the UAE, a residential complex in Bucharest and the largest travel agency in Romania by capitalization.
The last fact is easy to verify. According to Statista, in 2024, the leading position in the Romanian tourism market was occupied by the Travel Brands agency with total sales of more than 2 billion lei ($465 million) per year. This agency was founded by Romanian entrepreneur Dragos Anastasiu, and in 2019 (that is, even before Sandu became president) became part of German corporation REWE Group. “Verified” did not find Luminta Merculescu among the owners and managers of Travel Brands and other large Romanian travel agencies (for example, Christian Tour).
Among Lumintz Mărculescu who left her digital footprint on the Internet (and there are not so many of them), we also did not find a single major entrepreneur or graduate of Harvard University. This name is not mentioned on his website (unlike Maia Sandu), it is not in alumni database.
On the sites BBC And bellingcat and on their pages on social networks, “Verified” did not find a single mention of such an investigation. In addition, the videos that the BBC publishes on its social networks differ from this video - they are rarely edited from photographs alone; instead, they usually use reportage footage, recorded comments from speakers or a journalist, etc. If the video is still edited as a slide show, it is usually accompanied by a voice-over from the journalist. Similar fakes - videos retelling non-existent Bellingcat investigations on various topics and with a design reminiscent of the BBC - pro-Kremlin media are actively publish from 2023.
In Telegram channels, and then in other sources, messages regularly appear about the personal large expenses of the President of Moldova - in addition to the already mentioned sperm of celebrities, the lists include designer handbags and elite real estate in Los Angeles. Quite modest compared to Zelensky, who was credited with the purchase villas with a bomb shelter in the Caribbean, hotel in Courchevel, as well as Houses And car Hitler.
A video about Sandu appearing in public with a $150,000 Marc Jacobs handbag went viral at the end of May. The video is accompanied by the Cosmopolitan Europe logo - and this, in principle, could end the analysis, because such a publication does not exist (local versions of the American magazine Cosmopolitan There are several European countries, but there is no single English-speaking one). Marc Jacobs is an expensive brand, but not as luxurious as the video claims. Cost of handbags in constant assortment stamps range from $175 to $1,495. In January 2025, Marc Jacobs presented a limited-edition collection, The City Totes, which sold out almost immediately, but the bags in it were completely different from the one Sandu is holding in his hands. And they cost $295, more than 500 times cheaper than the amount announced in the video.
The video used in the fake was taken from post Sandu's adviser Igor Zakharov on Facebook. Fact checkers from the Ukrainian project “Gvara Media” asked him what kind of bag the president was wearing that day, and received an answer: It was a handbag from the British brand LK Bennett, which costs £100 (about $135).
It is significant that very similar fakes were previously spread about the first lady of Ukraine. So, in April, pro-Kremlin Telegram channels, several days apart, reported that Elena Zelenskaya allegedly acquired Princess Diana's dress for $3 million, and then visited the funeral of Pope Francis in a $180,000 outfit. Both claims were based on videos with the logos of British tabloids (The Sun and Daily Mail, respectively), both videos turned out to be fakes.
A story about a Los Angeles house owned by Sandu that burned down in January fires appeared on pro-Kremlin Telegram channels in May. The authors of the corresponding video, accompanied by the logo of the Los Angeles Times newspaper, estimated the value of the property at $15 million, and named adviser Sandu Ioana Girleanu as its nominal owner.
However, in list There are no members of the staff of the President of Moldova with that name. Among Ioan Girlenau, who can be found on the Internet, it was also not possible to find anyone who could be somehow connected with the President of Moldova.
There are also plenty of smaller errors in the video. For example, Girlenau is named as the neighbor of former Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl. In real publications in Western media, he would be called the leader of the Foo Fighters - as, in fact, it was in articles O consequences fires in Los Angeles. Grohl lives in the Encino area, where the average home price is is assessed less than $1.5 million. Grohl's own mansion costs $6 million - the price is probably affected, among other things, by the star status of the owner. A neighboring house, owned not by a celebrity, but by a non-public figure, can hardly cost two and a half times more.
The fires in Los Angeles also became the subject of fake news about Ukraine, but then propagandists worked much more quickly. In January 2025, at the height of the disaster, Telegram channels and Russian media reportedthat the fire allegedly destroyed eight mansions that belonged to high-ranking Ukrainian military personnel. The proof was a video with the logo of the Ukrainian crowdfunding platform United24, which did not produce such a video.
The quintessence of the narrative about Sandu’s corruption can be called a fake that Telegram channels disseminated at the end of April. They claimedthat The Economist magazine allegedly recognized Sandu as the most corrupt president of Eastern Europe. However, a reputable journal didn't make up such a rating did not produce such publications.
Population migration
Poverty and corruption, according to propaganda, lead to the fact that more and more Moldovan citizens are sent look for happiness abroad (in posts about Ukraine, mobilization is cited as reasons for emigration, in addition to corruption). Moreover, in June in Telegram channels appeared posts that tens of thousands of people from Africa and the Middle East will come to take their place - allegedly Sandu, at the request of the EU and in exchange for subsidies, agreed to turn the country into a “reservation.”
Such publications were accompanied by a fragment of the broadcast of the Moldovan Russian-language TV channel TV8 and the cover of the French newspaper Tribune with the text “A group of French senators intends to negotiate with President Sandu on the resettlement of refugees from France to Moldova in exchange for financial support.” The cover shows the imprint - No. 8112 dated June 7, 2025. However, in the archive on the La Tribune website you can see that in reality the cover of this issue was completely different: it does not depict Sandu with French President Emmanuel Macron, but French Economy Minister Eric Lombard, and the headline was dedicated to the country's budget.
As for the TV8 broadcast fragment, on its YouTube channel “Verified” found original this story. It turned out that the falsifiers left the first part of the video (with the announcer in the studio) in its original form, but changed the second part (with the voice-over): they added a fake voiceover and rewrote the text in the information line at the bottom of the frame.
The original video is almost twice as long and is entirely dedicated to the fall in industrial production in Moldova. Migrants are not mentioned even once in this news story.
Illegitimacy
If illegitimacy Zelensky is explained by Russian officials and propaganda by the fact that under martial law, the Ukrainian authorities didn't carry out presidential elections, Sandu is accused of rigging his re-election with the help of the Moldovan diaspora living abroad (both in the first and second rounds in foreign polls secured much more support than the domestic average).
In July, Telegram channels distributed information that the President of Moldova is massively distributing citizenship to French homeless people so that in the upcoming parliamentary elections they “vote as they should.” The posts were accompanied by a video allegedly published by the publication The Insider.
Although the video is in English, it is accompanied by The Insider logo, which is used only in Russian-language project social networks. The English version of the publication has its own accounts in X And Facebook, but videos are published there extremely rarely, the bulk of posts are links to articles on the site. When this does happen, the videos are marked with a different logo - The Insider World.
In any case, “Verified” did not find a single publication of similar content on the pages of The Insider. But about the attacks of Russian propaganda on Moldova and personally on Sandu, the publication wrote Not once.
Soon, the official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry Maria Zakharova, major Russian media and Telegram channels distributed another fake, this time dedicated directly to the upcoming parliamentary elections. In the video, the head of the Central Election Commission of Moldova, Angelica Karaman, allegedly admits foreign interference in the campaign and even justifies it in cases where Chisinau’s partners from the European Union, primarily France, intervene. The video turned out to be a deepfake, based on a May interview with an official and posted through the blog of a local opposition politician.
Methods
From the examples shown above, it is clear that when creating fakes about Moldova, pro-Kremlin media use the same methods that they previously tested in Ukraine.
Thus, to disseminate information about the corruption of the head of state or his entourage, falsified investigations of foreign media are used, which (even if they do not exist in reality) by their name alone create an aura of authority. To be more convincing in the eyes of inexperienced readers, fake makers can create not just fake screenshots or videos, but also clone sites of such publications, which are registered several days before the stuffing and soon stop updating, or even open at all.
Another common method is to falsify the covers of famous newspapers and magazines, as in the case of La Tribune. Back in 2022, fake makers understood, that cartoons allegedly published by satirical publications are more successful than others. And if, in the case of Zelensky, the spread of such fakes over time it almost disappeared, then this technology began to be used with renewed vigor to attack Sanda. Over the past year, “Verified” discovered six fake covers of the French magazine Charlie Hebdo dedicated to the President of Moldova in Telegram channels. They reflected the narratives discussed above, for example about perceived homosexuality and the creation of a “reservation” for refugees. However not a single one of these covers are not in the archive on the publication’s website.
They use fake coders and AI technologies. In addition to the deepfake already described above with the participation of the head of the Moldovan Central Election Commission, in August Telegram channels published videos from falsified Interview with Minister of Defense Anatoly Nosatiy. In it, the official allegedly justified the use of targets depicting Russian military personnel during joint Moldovan-American exercises (that video also turned out to be a fake).
Spreading
The fact that Moscow is involved in spreading fake news about Sandu in Moldova can be judged by a number of signs. One of the main pro-Kremlin Telegram channels targeting audiences in this country is “Gagauz Republic» (more than 30,000 subscribers), named after the autonomy located in the south of Moldova. He was created in May 2022, several months was called “Gagauz People’s Republic”, and in 2025 an emoji with the Russian tricolor appeared in its name. Although the owner of the channel is not reliably known, among his advertising contacts featured Telegram user with username @KirnossOff. According to TGStat, in the same role he is mentioned in the description of 30 channels, including the pro-war Zergiluo, “Ramsay” and “The Countess Runs the Pond with a Changed Face,” the channels of “Nightingales Live” hosts Sergei Mardan, Yulia Vityazeva and Roman Golovanov, as well as the satirical news channels well known to regular readers of “Verified” “but my Yandex wallet” and “The Empire is very evil.” In a conversation with the author of this text, @KirnossOff confirmed that he still sells advertising in the “Gagauz Republic” (although the public description of the channel now suggests contacting a bot for advertising questions).
An important channel for disseminating information (and disinformation) for Moldova is Facebook, where activists actively share fake news. One of them is Tatiana Berbecaru with 15,000 subscribers, who was telling, for example, about how Sandu bought celebrity sperm (that publication received more than 100 likes and almost 50 reposts). Judging by the information in her profile, Berbecaru was born, studied and lives in Chisinau, worked on local television. At the same time, on the cover of the profile there is Red Square, filled with people with white-blue-red flags, in the feed there are mostly news from pro-Russian media and Telegram channels. Berbekar actively publishes them: on September 18 alone, more than 20 posts (all in Russian) appeared on her page, in which the blogger talked about persecution to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, meeting Vladimir Putin with the leaders of the State Duma factions, in love with St. Petersburg Italian And protests in France, and also wished Russia's victory in the war with Ukraine and called George Soros is Sandu's godfather and the source of all Moldova's troubles. There is little reason to believe that the page is run by a bot - in addition to Facebook, Berbekaru is active in “VKontakte", she has accounts in X And Instagram (but she doesn’t use them), as well as a channel on YouTube, where a woman keeps an archive of her old television reports from over the years.
Another similar page belongs to a user named Marioara Gorjanu (more than 7,000 subscribers) - apparently, also a real person (although the name may be fictitious). This woman also has two profiles on VKontakte (one of them was abandoned early 2025, second active to this day). The content on this Facebook blog differs from that published by Berbecaru: many posts are written either in Romanian, or in Romanian and Russian, and are directly devoted to Moldovan politics and public life. At the same time, Gorjanu is also clearly following the Russian pro-government agenda. Among her VKontakte subscriptions are the pages of the Public Chamber of the Russian Federation and Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin, as well as many pages with names like “Born in the USSR”, “We are Russian!” and “Great Russia - this country cannot be defeated.” The blogger’s activity on Facebook is noticeably lower than that of Berbecaru: for the same September 18, she posted approximately half as many posts as her neighbor on the platform. At the same time, there are enough intersections - for example, the blogger also talks about the protests in France told. Among the fakes about Sandu on Gorjanu’s page appeared, among others, The Economist's falsified ranking of the most corrupt presidents.
If the profiles of Berbecaru and Gorjanu most likely belong to real people who sincerely believe that Sandu’s rule is bringing nothing but troubles to Moldova, then other Facebook pages studied by “Verified” arouse much more suspicion. As examples, we can name the accounts “Valentina Savelyeva” and “Valentina Vasilyevna”. Both have few followers (194 and 818 respectively), both post mostly quotes from great people and photos of flowers in their feeds, but both belong to the same groups. Among them are “Maia Sandu nu e președinta mea!” / Maia Sandu is not my president!”, “Multinational Moldova”, “Popor dezamagit”, “Moldova and Russia”, “Russia and Moldova together”, etc. Both users regularly repost to these groups fakes about Sandu in particular and about Moldova generally.
Another important account is the page Gagauz Media. It was created in November 2024, that is, after the presidential elections in Moldova. Among the more than four thousand subscribers, the majority are apparently bots - accounts with English names and portraits of Chinese stars in their profile photos. Gagauz Media also has website, accounts in Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, "VKontakte» and channel in Telegram, which, judging by TGStat data, has close relations with a whole network of pro-Russian Moldovan channels.
By data research group Insikt Group, by the beginning of September at least five large-scale information campaigns were simultaneously carried out in Moldova, covering all major social networks, instant messengers and video platforms: Telegram, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, Threads and YouTube. Analysts of the Moldavian WatchDog project identified there are more than 900 accounts associated with Russia on these social networks. “This is just part of a much larger network, which could number tens of thousands of accounts in other European countries,” the researchers say.
In September, journalists from two publications at once, a Moldovan newspaper Ziarul de Gardă And BBC, were able to infiltrate chats in which the dissemination of pro-Russian propaganda and disinformation about Sandu is coordinated in the run-up to the parliamentary elections. In both cases, journalists were trained and then given tasks: for example, posting posts about opposition candidates on Telegram or TikTok. The coordinators admitted that the work was paid from Moscow.
Such campaigns involve not only pro-Kremlin Telegram channels, activists and paid people, but also bots - for example, from the Matryoshka network, which propaganda actively uses at the global level. By calculations platform NewsGuard, only from mid-April to mid-July 2025, “Matryoshka” distributed 39 fake videos, screenshots and other falsified materials about Moldova, although a year before there were none at all.
The Pravda network of propaganda sites, operating in different languages of the world, including Romanian, also plays a role in this process. At first glance, it seems that its significance is small - but data Insikt Group, April 2025 audience news-pravda.com and all localized versions totaled about 365,000 visits. Even one fake posted via Telegram can collect much more views in a day. However, Pravda processes a huge amount of material - thousands of pro-Kremlin texts in different languages are published every day on different network domains. This flow of materials “litters” secondary sources, and through them large language models (LLMs) that have access to the Internet. This, in turn, leads to distortion of answers in popular chatbots like ChatGPT.
***
Before the start of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin propaganda essentially did not have a “fake factory” - disinformation was either spread targeted as part of discredit campaigns, or as a reaction to some high-profile event, from downing of a Malaysian Boeing to poisoning of politician Alexei Navalny. Over the past three and a half years, fake makers have made their work an integral part of the pro-Kremlin media, because discrediting the Zelenskys, Ukraine and Ukrainians is an important part of the information war. Having identified the most successful techniques and templates from such a huge array, propaganda began to use them when and where fakes were most in demand to achieve the Kremlin’s goals - for example, on the eve of the elections in Moldova.
At the same time, Maia Sandu is not the only post-Soviet leader who has been attacked by fake makers. Recently, the Prime Minister of Armenia has also become the subject of discrediting materials Nikol Pashinyan, who allegedly spent $17 million on a mansion in Canada, and his wife, who allegedly misappropriated donations intended for children in the amount of over $3 million. These fakes may well be, on the one hand, a response to official Yerevan’s actual withdrawal from the CSTO and reorientation towards a pro-Western course, on the other hand, evidence of the already begun preparations for the elections to the Armenian parliament, planned for June next year.
It is noteworthy that such attacks are not directed at autocrats, even if they come into direct conflict with the Russian leadership, such as Ilham Aliyev. Considering that, according to real journalistic investigations, relatives and nominees of the President of Azerbaijan own dozens of luxury real estate properties in UK, UAE and other countries, it makes no sense to attribute another villa to him from a media point of view.
Cover photo: presedinte.md
Read on topic:
- BBC. How Russian-funded fake news network aims to disrupt election in Europe
- "Present tense." “They pay directly from Moscow,” write against Sandu and for Trump. A journalist from Moldova uncovered a Russian propaganda network on TikTok, FB and Telegram
- Is it true that images of Russian military personnel were targeted during exercises in Moldova?
- Is it true that the Moldovan language is older than Romanian?
- Corrupt Zelensky, bullying of the UOC, murdered NATO generals: what fakes about Ukraine were spread in 2024
If you find a spelling or grammatical error, please let us know by highlighting the error text and clicking Ctrl+Enter.
