Moldova’s democratic resilience faces a revealing litmus test on November 15, when autonomous Gagauzia elects a new governor and People’s Assembly. In this southern region, measures intended to defend the Moldovan state against Russian interference risk being construed as evidence that Chișinău’s pursuit of EU integration entails the gradual erosion of Gagauz self-government. Moscow is ready to capitalize on such sentiments.
Home to a predominantly Orthodox Christian, Turkic-speaking minority, Gagauzia acquired autonomy in 1994 after demands for self-rule gathered force following the collapse of the USSR. Russification under Soviet rule had established Russian as the principal language of education, administration, and advancement in Gagauzia, diminishing the public role of the Gagauz language. In the post-Soviet context, Moscow’s local allies present the defense of this Russian-speaking world as the protection of Gagauz identity.
Such claims draw upon the very fears which helped produce Gagauz autonomy. Moldova’s Romanian language revival and calls for union with Romania during the independence movement unsettled Gagauz communities accustomed to Soviet institutions, prompting local leaders to proclaim a separate republic in 1990 whilst seeking to remain within the USSR. A negotiated settlement in 1994 secured self-government within independent Moldova and wrote that fear of unionism into law: Should Moldova lose its independence, the Gagauz retained the right to self-determination.
This clause has never lost its political utility. In a 2014 regional referendum declared illegal by Moldovan courts, over 98 percent of participants backed the Russia-led Customs Union and the right to secede should Moldova surrender its statehood. The 1994 settlement is now increasingly under stress, while the upcoming November vote will renew the institutions through which that accommodation operates.
Gagauz institutions have recently been a thorn in the side of the Moldovan authorities in Chișinău, rendering the upcoming November election particularly consequential. The mandate of the People’s Assembly expired almost a year ago. After two failed attempts to organise a vote, regional contests will now be conducted entirely under Moldova’s national Electoral Code.
In July, Moldova’s Constitutional Court removed the Assembly’s power to approve the regional electoral council and affirmed national authority over electoral legislation. Common rules strengthen Chișinău’s ability to enforce electoral integrity, while reducing regional control over the institutions through which autonomy is exercised. Critics say this is an encroachment on Gagauz autonomy.
Tighter central oversight does not resolve the underlying electoral divide. Almost 95 percent of votes cast in Gagauzia during Moldova’s October 2024 referendum opposed the constitutional amendment on European Union accession. In the presidential run-off weeks later, Alexandr Stoianoglo, whom Moldovan President Maia Sandu branded as “Moscow’s man,” took 97 percent of the region’s vote.
Moscow-linked election operations in Gagauzia have typically exploited an existing constituency of Russian cultural attachment, distrust of Chișinău, and Euroscepticism. Disrupting illicit foreign interference networks is necessary, but this will not remove those preferences. The goal for the Moldovan authorities, therefore, should be to preserve a meaningful democratic contest whilst preventing foreign resources from distorting it.
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The 2025 parliamentary campaign demonstrated the scale of the challenge, with reports of illicit financing, organised vote-buying, and information manipulation. OSCE election observers subsequently identified networks financed by Russia and concluded that proactive enforcement helped deter vote-buying. However, the same observers also pointed to serious risks associated with efforts to defend electoral integrity. The eleventh-hour exclusion of Heart of Moldova, the party of former Gagauz governor Irina Vlah, undermined legal certainty and the right to an effective appeal. Excluding political parties creates democratic costs that cannot easily be set aside by invoking resilience, even if intervention is warranted.
Yevgenia Gutsul’s case underlines these dangers. Elected governor in 2023, she received a seven-year sentence in August 2025 for illicitly financing a political party with money received from Kremlin-backed networks. Gutsul’s proximity to Moscow was no secret: She had been photographed with Vladimir Putin in Sochi in 2024 after seeking his protection against alleged encroachments by Chișinău.
Autonomy offers no immunity from accountability for financial irregularities, but the prosecution of political leaders can be construed as the persecution of an entire community. The regional Assembly portrayed Gutsul’s conviction as an attack on the Gagauz people and their special status, while Russian media used her meeting with Putin to present Moscow as protector and Moldova as oppressor. The same network whose financing requires disruption can thereby appropriate the language of minority protection to defend its political position.
Language further complicates the picture. A new requirement obliges gubernatorial candidates to know Romanian as well as Gagauz. This makes practical sense, as the governor represents Gagauzia before national institutions and sits ex officio in the national cabinet, where proficiency in the state language allows regional interests to be defended effectively. The Constitutional Court upheld the condition on October 2, stressing the status of Romanian among Gagauzia’s three official languages.
Nevertheless, this is where Russification becomes politically consequential. For Gagauz voters whose everyday public world is Russian-speaking, a Romanian-language candidacy requirement can be presented as a threat. Pro-Russian politicians can fuse party restrictions, Gutsul’s imprisonment, and language policy into a single, reductive story of dispossession.
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For Moscow, Gagauzia has long offered a lever short of outright secession. Alongside Transnistria, it has been central to the Kremlin’s plan for Moldova since the 2003 Kozak Memorandum, which envisioned a federalized state in which pro-Russian regions could block foreign policy choices. In the current circumstances, that design now depends less on capturing institutions than on cultivating grievance.
The tools to do so have become far cheaper and more deniable: Anonymous online accounts, paid influencers, and a ready-made narrative of oppression rather than the large-scale vote-buying alleged in 2023. With Russia now struggling to maintain influence throughout the former Soviet Empire, the Kremlin has every incentive to preserve inexpensive levers of pressure on Moldova’s southern flank.
Turkey is the external actor best placed to complicate this story. Ankara opened the first and only foreign consulate in Gagauzia in 2020. Through its development agency TIKA, the country has funded schools, a kindergarten, a diagnostic center, and cultural facilities across the region. The Turkish ruling party’s deputy chair responsible for relations with Turkic states, Kürşad Zorlu, traveled to Gagauzia in August after first affirming Moldova’s territorial integrity in Chișinău and floating joint investment alongside support for Gagauz language and culture.
A Turkic state that backs Moldovan sovereignty undercuts Moscow’s claim to be the sole protector of the Gagauz. Brussels and Washington should treat Ankara as a partner here, co-funding Gagauz language education and ensuring that the material dividends of the EU accession process are visible in Gagauzia.
For the Moldovan authorities, the right approach should combine enforcement with inclusion. Harmonizing Gagauzia’s statute with the national Electoral Code, and doing so through negotiation rather than litigation, would reduce the scope for claims of dispossession. Supporting Gagauz alongside Romanian would give practical substance to the claim that integration need not entail any cultural surrender. November’s lawful mandate must be respected, including where voters choose opponents of Moldova’s European course.
Gagauzia matters because Moldova must demonstrate that dismantling Moscow’s political machinery can strengthen capacity for self-government. Otherwise, measures intended to deny Russia influence may replenish the grievances through which Moscow acquires it.
Laurentiu Plesca is a program officer at the German Marshall Fund of the United States focusing on EU enlargement, European security, and Russian influence in the Black Sea region. Will Kingston-Cox is founder and managing director of Europinion.uk, and a postgraduate researcher in Russian and East European Studies at the University of Oxford.
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Image: Supporters of leader of Moldova's Gagauzia autonomous region Eugenia Gutul (Yevgenia Gutsul), who was detained in connection with a criminal case into corruption in the financing of a pro-Russian electoral bloc, protest during a rally outside a court building in Chisinau, Moldova. April 9, 2025. (REUTERS/Vladislav Culiomza)