Invasion of the Troll Army. Putin does not intend to give Moldova with a walkway
According to the investigation of the weekly “Ziarul de Garda” Preparations to influence parliamentary elections in Moldova they began immediately after the second round of presidential elections November 3 last year, which was won by the pro -European Sandu. She defeated the pro -Russian candidate Alexander Stoianoglo despite the millions invested by Moscow in promoting their favorites, including by buying votes.
For several months “activists responsible for communication” Pobieda block [ros. Zwycięstwo]created by Ilaan Szora in Moscow, were trained by a team of Russian -speaking curators in the field of using social media and cheating algorithms in order to achieve the greatest possible influence.
Then, “activists” had the task of bombing social media daily anti -European propaganda texts in accordance with the Russian narrativeacting as a virtual digital army of the Kremlin against Moldova.
“Ziarul de Garda”, investigative weekly with headquarters in Chisinau, It shows how the real Farm of Trolls has been created, expanded and consolidatedcoordinated directly from Moscow.
The author of the investigation is Natalia Zaharescu, who infiltrated the propaganda network under the pseudonym Irina Zahar. The first contact with the Kremlin network took place on November 7, 2024, four days after the second round of presidential elections in Moldova. On this day, Irina Zahar was proposed to participate in “free training in the field of social media”so that she could perform the “activist for coordination of communication” as part of the Pobieda block. Her first “curator” was a certain Ewa Siergiejewna.
According to the investigation, most communication took place via a telegram. Ewa Siergiejewna sent Irina a link to the group called “Training activists responsible for communication”. The first instructor in the group was a woman who introduced herself as ASEA Albertowna. Her role was to familiarize the participants with the basic functions of the telegram.
“This chat is not publicly available. Everything is done to promote and create a new community. Because nowadays the fight is informative, and the old methods do not work, it is necessary to go to a new level. And the new level is, although it sounds terrifying, the information war system. Our collective, which has gathered today, is a piloting of a large project that spreads all over the country,” wrote ASEA Albertowna.
What works most effectively? Fear and money
According to Zaharescu, the initial idea was to create groups on a telegram for each region of Moldova, where “activists” responsible for communication would publish entertainment or cultural information alternately with political messages. They were also trained in using VPN, anonymize data on a telegram, hiding the phone number and not using real names.
ASEA Albertowna explained to “activists” that they would have to publish political information without looking politically: “We must present it so carefully that a person She had the impression that we did not tell her, but that she thought about it herself. This will be our greatest difficulty and our main task. “
Target recipients of political messages should be The elderly because they are the most active voters. And, as ASEA Albertowna wrote in chat, money and fear are the most effective tactics.
The first task was to support the candidate Ion Galusca as the mayor of the town of Causeni. The Szyora candidate was promoted by positive posts, likes and accessories on Facebook. However, he lost the election, which took place on November 17, 2024. In the meantime, the instructors on the web decided move the main activity from the telegram to the thicket. This was the result of the presidential election in Romania. New moderators appeared on the next platform, introducing themselves as Mikhail Aleksandrowicz and a certain Adam.
Flash MOB first, then an election campaign
Adam talked to “activists” about organizing Flash Mob on Tiktoku during a Christmas break. The aim of the campaign was to expand the group of recipients of the accounts they control with funny, harmless, but politically colored videos.
On December 25, at Christmas, Mikhail Aleksandrowicz published a video clip on which Flash Mob was to be based. The video was entitled “Dances that warm us up”. One of the group's activists, an Inga, who was a “zero” Flash Mobu patient.
Inga filmed herself who dancing next to the Christmas tree to the folk melody, with four slogans on the screen, which were to be promoted by Flash Mob: cheap gas, LGBT ban, honest elections, retirement subsidies. As “Ziarul de Garda” writes, the task of “activists” was to make similar films and publish them on tiktoku using the same melody and hashtags.
Pro -Russian activity on tiktoku. Illustrative photo
According to Mikhail, Aleksandrowicz Flash Mob was aimed at “creating the basics on which we will work in parliamentary elections”. Until December 28, Flash Mob collected 64,000 Views, which was appreciated in Moscow.
“The Sandu regime must leave”
Zaharescu writes that at the beginning of the new year training and tasks for “activists” responsible for communication intensified. At the end of January, ASEA Albertowna announced a new project for the most active members of the group. After this announcement, February 5 “Irina Zahar” was invited to participate in a new project called Infolider.
The woman who introduced herself as Nelly explained the reporter under the cover that the purpose of the infolider is “disseminating current political information about the Republic of Moldova on the Internet. Every day we will publish posts on Facebook and Tiktoku“.
According to “Ziarul de Garda”, the goals were as follows: original content on a specific topic at least three times a week, posts about your own hobby at least once a week, and posts on the indicated political topic at least once or twice a week.
ASEA Albertowna advised project participants to use humor, popular songs and artificial intelligence tools, especially chatgpt, to reformulate the texts so that they are not identical and give the impression of personalized messages.
Adam, in turn, commissioned each participant Collecting at least 300 friends on Facebook and told about the remuneration for this activity. “It is paid, I assure you directly from Moscow. It is not paid by the block [Pobieda — red.]is paid from Moscow, “he insisted.
One of the tasks of the Infolider project was the dissemination of the message that “The Sandu regime must leave” when Donald Trump returns to the White House. In this context, narratives against the European Union and the USAID program were used, distributed at that time by several pro -Russian politicians in Moldova.
Maia Sandu, President of Moldova, during a press conference in Chisinau, August 27, 2025.
The Infolider project was also used to support the former Romanian presidential candidate Calin Georgescu, towards which criminal proceedings are pending for creating or supporting fascist, racist, xenophobic or anti -Semitic groups. When Georgescu was arrested, Network members were asked to write posts supporting him. They all had to be sent to Chatbot Infolider to be counted.
$ 350 million for manipulation before the election
After a month of work, the reporter was asked to provide her identity and account number at the Russian PSB bank. She sent the data by which she penetrated to Szora as “Irina Zahar”.
A few days later, the journalist was excluded from the group on the telegramand the curators removed all conversations with her from the telegram. When she tried to contact them for confrontation, none of them responded to phones and messages.
The digital army is still working at the highest speedconstantly publishing messages that comply with Russian narratives slandering the European Union and the European path of Moldova.
According to sources in the Kremlin, cited by the Ukrainian journalist Dmitry Gordon, the Russian regime allocated $ 350 million. [ok. 1,27 mld zł] to manipulate the parliamentary elections in Moldova in their favor and getting rid of the pro -European government in Chisinau.
