Moldova and EU viciously attack Orthodox Christianity
President Maia Sandu is using thug methods to persecute Christians in this small country on the frontlines of the Russia-EU clash - mimicing Zelensky's brutal persecution of Christians in Ukraine.
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Moscow, Russia
I’m visiting Russia with a group of Western Christian journalists at the invitation of the Moscow Patriarchate, and they implored us to make a stop in Moldova to learn about what they claim are outrages being perpetrated there against this most Orthodox of countries. 3 of us managed to fit Moldova in, and what we discovered confirmed the worst.
Moldova? It barely registers. Even I, a geopolitical analyst, who had obviously heard of her, had a fuzzy idea of where she is, or knew anything about her. So for starters:
Historically a part of Romania, speaking a Romanian dialect (Moldovan), she always lived on the borders of empires, absorbed by one or another for 600 years. Under the Ottomans since 1538, then in the Russian Empire since 1812, then briefly independent after WW1, then a part of Romania, then reclaimed by the Soviet Union, and independent since that empire’s fall. Like Bulgaria, Serbia, and Greece, Moldovans view the Russian episode with great gratitude, for they were liberated by their Orthodox Russian brothers from the Ottoman Islamic yoke, and their time in the Russian empire was a very positive aspect of their history.
With a population of 2.4 million, she is culturally Romanian, but with a strong Russian-Soviet influence. Walking around central Chisinau, the capital, I felt very much as if I might be in Russia - most people (90%) speak Russian. The city is scarred with the unspeakably ugly prefab and Soviet architecture characteristic of 60s and 70s USSR interspersed with charming older Romanian buildings. Interacting with the locals the manners, mentality, and vibe is very much like in Russia today. Chisinau is a very multi-ethnic place - a legacy of Soviet ethnic-mixing, with substantial Russian (I include ‘Ukrainains’ in this group), Bulgarian, and others minorities. 650 thousand Moldovans live in Russia, and I have met many in Moscow. Family and cultural ties are strong as many Moldovans studies and made careers in Soviet Russia.
In a nutshell, Moldova is one of the Eastern European states where most people have a positive image of Russia and want to be friends with both Russia and the EU, and just get along. She is a peaceful, mostly agricultural place, poor by EU and Russian standards. The average monthly salary is about $600/month, at the bottom of the list, recently outdone only by the disaster zone known as Ukraine. Sadly, a pro-EU globalist government came into power in 2020 thanks to widespread election fraud. Here is an excellent article from RT with the details: How EU elites hijacked this little country’s independence. Moldova is not in the EU, but with powerful forces trying to drag her in. What’s more, Romania’s globalist government wants to annex Moldova outright, and destroying Moldova’s church is a key step in enacting that.
Which brings us to the persecution of Christians.
The persecutions
President Maia Sandu - childless, shrimpish and mean, is one of these globalist creations - like Ursula von der Leyen, Angela Merkel, Kaja Kallas (why are so many of the worst globalist tools women?). She and her gang in power have obviously drunk the Koolaid on the idea that historic Orthodox Christian churches are a tool of bloodthirsty Putin and his tyranny which must be brought to heel. Undoubtedly there is an aversion to Christianity writ large lurking behind this official pretext, and a healthy does of CIA obsession with attacking any Orthodox churches not under the control of their lapdog, Patriarch Bartholemew of Constantinople. Sandu is also a Romanian citizen, and seems to be part of the plan to fold Moldova into Romania, which means she is engaged in high-treason. On top of all this, NATO sees Romania as a key bulwark against ‘Russian aggression’, and is intent on building up Romania’s military - so poor little Moldova has yet another wolf at the door eager to deprive her of her independence.
We met with priests, monks, journalists, laypeople from congregations, student activists, and lawyers and they related a sorry, if somewhat cartoonish tale: Following Zelensky’s playbook, these measures include:
Wholesale wiretapping and surveillance of Orthodox priests, activists, laypeople, etc, suspected of having sympathies with Moscow.
Searches and detentions on the pretext of investigating ‘Russian interference’.
Arbitrary fines of priests for taking pilgrimages to Russian holy sites. 1000 priests have been fined on average of 2000 Euros for such subversions - a substantial sum in this poor country.
A campaign of trying to force churches into a new jurisdiction loyal to the government - mostly by using government funds, exacted from the poor Moldovan’s already punishing taxes, but also coming from the EU, to entice less-than-ethical priests.
Pressure, intimidation, and blackmail of priests and congregations using the fact that legally all church buildings still belong to the Moldovan state - i.e., the threat of expropriation.
Probition of media not toeing the government line - again under the pretext of ‘Russian subversion’.
Open threats of extra-judicial violence (i.e. if you resist or exercise your constitutional rights you will be arrested and beaten, or perhaps just beaten by anonymous thugs.)
Corrupt courts which simply ignore any allegations of human rights abuses.
A relentless government propaganda in the pro-Eu media (all pro-Russian media has been shut down), demonizing the church as a tool of influence of the dastardly Russians.
ALL of the people we spoke to stressed that they were taking a serious risk even meeting and talking to us, but that they were doing so to defend their faith, an admirable act of heroism. Historically, Moldova has been an outpost of Orthodox Christianity, surrounded by enemies, and like the Serbs, defending the faith is in the DNA of this resilient people.
The historic Moldovan church has been under the spiritual authority of the Russian church since the Russian Empire drove out the Ottomans in 1812. Herein lies the confusion. Our hosts explained that this authority is strictly spiritual, a mechanism for keeping the spiritual rules straight in the Orthodox church. They insist that it is in no-wise political, with none of the churches under the spiritual authority of the Russian Patriarch (Ukrainian, Baltic, central Asian, Africa, Japan, China, US, etc.) beholden to Russian political interests. These national churches’ first fealty in secular matters is the to their respective governments, as Orthodoxy indeed teaches all churches to be. Perniciously, the likes of Sandu, Zelensky and Baltic governments insist that in fact the influence is also political - hence the persecution of Orthodox Christians in these countries.
Upon hearing this tale of ludicrous measures reminiscent of some kind of gangster state, we asked our hosts how this is possible in a country which aspires to join the EU, and purports to being ‘democratic’ and so on. They explained that it was due to two things: 1) Some aspects of Moldovan society have not yet emerged from a post-Soviet gangster mentality which prevailed in the 90s and early 2000s, which also characterized Russia and Ukraine (to this day), and 2) There is no coverage of what is happening in Western media, so the government feels no pressure to adhere to elementary standards of decency. They begged us to get the word out.
An example of this clownish thuggery which caused a diplomatic incident occurred about a month ago when a good friend, prominent and influential Christian pro-family Washington lobbyist, Brian Brown and several populist members of the European Parliament were detained for 24 hours at the Chisinau airport in July when trying to attend the Make Europe Great Again conference. He kicked up a row on Twitter and leaned on the US State Department and embassy, and was eventually allowed in:
We visited a village church deep in the countryside where a full house of congregants awaited us to tell their story of how the government had tried to snatch their church out from under them by bribing the village priest, who, by all accounts, seemed to be a bad egg. The crowd of about 40 were mostly elderly women who were absolutely lovely, and the clucked around us Americans like so many hens, venting their anger and frustration and vowing to not give in and to defend Holy Orthodoxy. They recounted how they finally had no choice but to physically chuck the priest out of the church because he refused to leave, after which he stole the tongues from the church’s bells, bells which the villagers had bought themselves. They were very simple rural folk in the best sense, bronzed from a life outdoors, with hands of the kind which do a lot of manual work. They were warm and kind but also very strong, and they were the best possible advertisement for this small agricultural nation.
We criss-crossed the rolling hills of the interior and saw nothing but sunny villages and fields - a lot of orchards and vineyards and huge amounts of delicious fresh fruits for sale at roadside stands. Moldova gets 300 days of sunshine per year, making it a prime fruit-producing region. Her wine is excellent and known around the world. We visited stunning monasteries, heard magnificent choirs, and noticed a plethora of crosses erected along roads and at intersections. Moldova has the distinction of being the most Orthodox Christian country on earth, with 95.2% of the population identifying so in the 2024 census.
We spoke with Bishop Marchel, a fierce and fearless critic of the ongoing persecutions, and he impressed us mightily with his quiet strength, humility, and refusal to back down. He stressed that the designs of the Romanian church on the Moldovan church have nothing to do with Christ, for the whole campaign is purely a political project, well funded by anonymous sources in the West. He implored us to help get the word to JD Vance, whom he sees as a defender of traditional values and victims of human rights abuses in Europe. (If anyone reading this can help with that, pls do). He explained that the Moldovan faithful are 95% against the predations of the Romanian church, and are simply being steamrolled with money and political pressure. He described the government as rabidly Russophobic and that one reason they are attacking the church is because it is staunchly and very vocally against the LGBT agenda. He also said that if the pro-EU party wins in the parliamentary elections next week, the entire Moldovan church could simply be outlawed, and cease to exist. They are literally fighting for the life of the church and Marchel stressed that the situation is dire.
It became clear after a while that the globalists in far away Brussels, Washington and the Phanar cooking up plans to swindle and bribe these people out of the church they had fought and died for for centuries were underestimating their mark, and judging by the grannies we met in their church, have a tough row to hoe. The people are overwhelmingly traditional, unspoiled by Western decadence, and want no truck with the tranny-happy snake oil being sold them. American Orthodox priest Fr. John Whiteford wrote an excellent series of articles about his visit there in 2023, capturing very well the charm, humility, profound Christianity, and unspoiled simplicity of the people and their traditional values.
Reasons for optimism
Many of our interlocutors said that the advent of Trumpian foreign policy had improved matters, primarily because the money tap through AID and similar agencies had been turned off. An Orthodox legal group has organized and is fighting back in the courts, and despite the flawed legal system, their odds appear good only because the behavior of the government is so laughably illegal, violating every human rights convention this side of the Dniestr (their main river). The anti-EU opposition has majority sympathy in the country by a very large margin. They were robbed of the presidency in 2020 but in the upcoming parliamentary elections on November 28, they seem to have fought the EU lunatics to a draw, with neither party likely to win a majority, forcing new elections in a few months. RT again has the story.
Transnistria
Moldova also has a most remarkable phenomenon - a fully independent very Russian mini-state which broke away when the country was founded in 1991. Never part of historic Moldova, Transnistria was tacked on by Stalin when he annexed Moldova during WW2, in a classic case of gerrymandering to neutralize nationalism. Its capital, Tiraspol, (pop 130,000) was founded by the legendary 18th century general Suvorov, and it is very much a Russian creation, with much the same atmosphere as the Russian cities of Eastern Ukraine, and nearby Odessa, another historically Russian city. Russia still keeps a garrison there, and they sit on a massive Soviet ammunition depot. The president, Vadim Krasnoselsky, is a great admirer of the Russian empire and has filled his capital with excellent heroic sculpture of Tsarist Russian figures. It’s an easy 1 hour drive from Chisinau and we managed to fit in a quick visit there and found it delightful. If you ever go to Chisinau, don’t miss Tiraspol, it is fascinating, charming, very pleasant, and very Russian - a completely different country than Moldova. Due to geopolitical calculations no country has officially recognized tiny Transnistria except for Abkhazia, not even Russia.
So cheer for tiny Moldova and her historic church and spread the word. The battle isn’t lost, and the people are standing strong. She’s a small rural country you’ve probably never heard or thought of, but becoming a symbol of resistance to EU technocratic tyranny. Other members of our group will be publishing materials and podcasts about the assault on Orthodoxy there, resulting in some flags planted in the info-space, putting Sandu and her gang of thugs on notice that their flagrant and embarrassing misdeeds will not go unreported.
Great piece Charles. Visiting Moldova and hearing from the people was eye opening
Thank you, Charles, for making us aware of the shenanigans in Moldova. I was aware of the Transnistria situation, sitting as it does on an enormous stockpile of munitions which Ukraine sorely needs. TBH, I'm surprised Ukraine hasn't made moves in that direction previously.
I will include these people in my prayers.