Plan previously concealed now disclosed.

NEW YORK (Dagbladet): The Swedish newspaper The Express and American Yahoo News are among the media that have participated in a journalistic collaboration that has given them access to the document.

Moldova, which borders Ukraine to the north, south and east, is Europe’s poorest country. The five-page document will show the plan for a hybrid war from Russia against the country.

– The goal is for Moldova to lose sovereignty over its foreign policy, says the country’s Prime Minister, Dorin Recean to Expressen when he gets to read the document.

State of exception

After Russia attacked Ukraine last February, neighboring Moldova has been living in a state of emergency. Among other things, the country, which itself only has 2.5 million inhabitants, has accepted 700,000 Ukrainian refugees.

The leaked document describes how to stop Moldova’s independence.

The first step should be to “stop”, “counteract” and “freeze” Moldova’s contacts with the EU, NATO and especially neighboring Romania, which is a member of both NATO and the EU.

In the longer term, Russia’s plan is to build pro-Russian groups in the political elite, strengthen the position of the Russian Church and make Moldova remain dependent on Russian gas, according to the document.

Putin friend creates fear

– More and more

Expressen and its partners referred to a similar document from the Kremlin on Belarus in February. In that document, Russia is said to have planned to take over the neighboring country completely.

– The Kremlin is acting more and more aggressively as Moldova is now heading in the opposite direction to what Russia wants. This means that the Moldovan leadership has taken a clear course towards the West. The Kremlin’s strategic goals thus become more difficult to achieve as time goes on, says a Western intelligence officer to Expressen.

To the east of Moldova lies the area of ​​Transnistria. It has been under Russian control since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Russia already has a clear military presence here.

The leaked document, which is from 2021, divides the strategy into three time horizons – up to 2022, 2025 and in the long term.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Moldova has struggled with political unrest and corruption. Now the country is struggling with sky-high inflation of 34 percent.

Alleging coup: – Manipulation

– Destabilization

Dorin Recean (48) became the country’s prime minister in mid-February. He wants the country to become part of the EU.

– Russia has long strived to achieve its strategic goal that Moldova should not have sovereignty over its foreign policy at all. That is the primary strategic goal, he tells Expressen after reading the document.

He believes that Putin is trying to achieve this through a hybrid war where they are trying to create protests in the streets, attacks on the government and with propaganda.

– They are obviously co-financing these protests and attempts to destabilize. It is looking to recruit tough guys who can attack the police, who can attack government buildings and businesses and carry out the kind of provocations that can lead to destabilization, says Recean to the newspaper.

He tells how, among other things, 80 false bomb threats were reported against various places in Moldova last year to create fear in the population.

– Anxiety as a backdrop

– With anxiety as a backdrop, you can present a false narrative. They cannot reach us militarily. Right now they don’t have the resources and prerequisites to do that, says Recean.

In the past year, Moldova is said to have closed a number of Russian propaganda channels, but the prime minister believes this happened far too late, and that the country is now seeing the result of 30 years of Russian propaganda.

Recean says that the aim of his government now is to strengthen state institutions and the economy.

– People are afraid. And when people are afraid, they say: OK, the Russian bear is too big for us. Maybe we can reach some kind of understanding or agreement with the Russian bear so that it does not touch us, the prime minister explains to Expressen.

The American administration of Joe Biden warned on Friday about the developments in Moldova and Putin’s plans.

Warning

– Russian actors, some with ties to Russian intelligence, are trying to create and use demonstrations in Moldova as a basis to fuel a contrived rebellion against the Moldovan authorities, said John Kirby, spokesman for the US National Security Council, at a press conference, according to Yahoo News.

– Very tense

He also said that the US expects that there will be more of this in the future.

On Sunday, just two days after Kirby’s statement, thousands of protesters marched through the Moldovan capital of Chisinau. They demanded that the country’s president, Maia Sandu, step down.

She wants closer relations with the West and met, among other things, the President of the United States, Joe Biden in Warsaw in February.

Putin’s administration has so far not commented on the leaked document.