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Russia Steps Up Disinformation Efforts as Trump Abandons Resistance
The New York Times (Gift)
08/22/2025
Since returning to the White House in January, President Trump has dismantled the American government’s efforts to combat foreign disinformation. The problem is that Russia has not stopped spreading it.
How much that matters can now be seen in Moldova, a small but strategic European nation that has since the end of the Cold War looked to Europe and the United States to extract itself from Moscow’s shadow.
The Trump administration has slashed diplomatic and financial support for the country’s fight against Russian influence, even as the Kremlin has conducted what researchers and European officials described as an intense campaign to sway that country’s parliamentary elections, scheduled for Sept. 28.
The Russians have flooded social media with fake posts, videos and entire websites that are created and spread on TikTok, Telegram, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube using increasingly effective artificial intelligence tools
One post impersonated OK!, the celebrity magazine based in New York, in an attempt to smear Moldova’s president, Maia Sandu, with a preposterous accusation involving celebrity sperm donors.
A year ago, when the country last held elections, Biden administration officials pushed back against such campaigns, urging platforms like Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, to do more to identify trolls or inauthentic accounts. No more.
“The Russians now are able to basically control the information environment in Moldova in a way that they could only have dreamed a year ago,” said Thomas O. Melia, a former official at the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development.
The Russian efforts have also been honed with experience and aided by rapidly evolving technologies that have made Moldova a showcase of the ways the Kremlin seeks to exert its influence in other countries.
The Stimson Center, a research organization in Washington, called Moldova, which borders Ukraine, “a testing ground for hybrid warfare operations” that “are likely to shape similar efforts” across Europe.
