- In March, authorities in Moldova banned news broadcasts from Russia.
- The parliament also prohibited the public display of the "Z" symbol used by Russian forces in Ukraine.
- In the capital, experts told Insider that Moldova was fighting a flood of propaganda from Moscow.
CHIŞINĂU, Moldova — Moldova is not at war, but it is surrounded by it on three sides: Ukraine lies to the east, north, and south. Nearly 100,000 people have sought refuge from bombings in this small country of 3 million, but the peace here is tenuous. Moldova is not a member of NATO or the European Union, and 10% of the population lives in a breakaway region backed by the Russian government.
According to its constitution, Moldova is neutral. Effectively, it has to be, having a tiny and poorly equipped military that even members of parliament admit would be incapable of putting up a fight. But the government here, newly elected in November 2021, is adamant that it stands not with the Kremlin but with its invaded neighbor.
Since the war began, it has also taken steps that reflect the feeling that Moldova faces an existential threat. In March, the government's Commission for Emergency Situations prohibited news broadcasts from Russia, which had dominated the airwaves. The government is also requiring balance, with typically pro-Moscow broadcasts needing to present both sides.
"I'll say simply: Tucker Carlson, in Moldova, would be prohibited," Valeriu Pasa, an expert on disinformation at WatchDog.MD, an anti-corruption campaign organization, said of the prime-time Fox News anchor in an interview at his office in Chișinău.
Carlson has previously parroted Russian talking points about Russia's justification for aggression against Ukraine — even as far back as 2019. Fox News did not respond to a request for comment.
Moldova is a bilingual nation. The official tongue, since independence, is Romanian; under the Soviet Union, it was Russian. While most people speak both, more understand the latter, Pasa said, which is why it is so important to regulate broadcasts.
It's not a simple matter of free speech versus censorship, he argued, but a matter of leveling the playing field between truly independent (and usually underfunded) news media and media outlets backed by the full might of a foreign government — and not being naive in the face of an invasion. Russian state "news" is not news at all: broadcasters deny war crimes and deny that there's really even a war at all ("special military operation" is the nomenclature). Legitimate, independent journalism in Moscow is punishable with jail time and worse.
"It's important to give people the right to access anything, but when it is a limited market you at least have to make sure that the conditions are fair," Pasa said. "Now there's a war. Russia is an aggressor," he continued, and its media "just an extension of Russia's military force."
Nadine Gogu, executive director of the Independent Journalism Center in Chișinău, said limits on any expression must of course be narrow and critically examined. But these are also not normal times in a country where, even in the best times, popular media is highly partisan and propagandistic.
"If we didn't have the war, and we didn't see these images from Bucha, maybe we could be having a different discussion," she said.
Still, the impact of prohibiting Russian broadcasts may be less than expected. In the first days of the war self-censorship had achieved largely the same effect — if not on official Russian broadcasts, at least at outlets associated with the Socialist opposition, which typically rebroadcast content from Moscow.
"It was so strange to see in the newscasts how they were talking about refugees from Ukraine but not reporting about what is happening, really," Gogu said. "It was all about how local authorities are dealing with this crisis — and nothing about what was going on in Ukraine."
Moldova, which became an independent country with the collapse of the Soviet Union, has for the past three decades been divided on the question of Russia.
Every couple of years, the government alternates from Communist to Socialist to pro-West — each getting thrown out over corruption. But the war in Ukraine made the issue less abstract, and the presence of so many Ukrainians not only united Moldovan society, which has rallied to welcome refugees, but made it impossible to deny the savagery of the war they fled.
The typically outspoken have opted for silence, at least on the most important issue of the day. It's a fight they can't win, at least not right now. But there are adjacent arguments to be made.
On April 19, Moldovan President Maia Sandu, elected in a 2020 landslide, signed a law prohibiting another form of propaganda: displays of the pro-war "Z" and "V" symbols used by the Russian military and its supporters. That comes ahead of May 9 — Victory Day in Russia and Eastern Europe, the fear being that an event to celebrate the defeat of Nazi Germany could be used to antagonize refugees and lend support to the war in Ukraine.
In a statement, Russia's embassy in Chișinău accused Moldovan officials of falling prey to the "cancel culture phenomenon being promoted by Western society," according to Interfax, a Russian news agency, saying it "complicates movement toward peace and friendship."
Maria Zakharova, a spokesperson for Russia's Foreign Ministry, went further, calling the prohibition "a real betrayal" that would result in "painful" consequences for Moldova, comments that led the government in Chișinău to summon the Russian ambassador.
Radu Marian, a member of parliament and vice president of the governing Party of Action and Solidarity, conceded that the move — which includes banning a symbol, the St. George's ribbon, that is used not just to celebrate contemporary Russian actions but, traditionally, victory over the Nazis — would aid the Kremlin's propaganda campaign against his government.
"This was a complicated decision," he said in an interview at his office in Moldova's parliament building, one that could well have "the inverse effect of what we aim." Russia, of course, is already waging a war in Ukraine that it falsely claims is intended to eliminate fascism. But he argued that banning the display of the symbol is consistent, and indeed required, by a democracy in a time of war.
"In any free society, any sign, any message, that promotes violence and war is absolutely unacceptable, especially in a peaceful country like Moldova," Marian said.
"I think it's a logical decision. We are more vulnerable because we have Russian agents — we have some people who are supporting the invasion," he said, and there are fears across the country that, with a breakaway region supported by Russia, it could be next. "We just cannot allow war-promoting messages."
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