Moldovan President Maia Sandu’s decision to align the country with NATO will have dire consequences for the country’s sovereignty and security, Alexey Polishchuk, director of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Second CIS Department, told TASS in an interview, Paralel.Az reports.

"Continuing the current course of the Moldovan leadership, shedding its neutrality and buddying up to NATO while breaking historical ties with Russia and other CIS countries, will have the most negative consequences for Moldova’s sovereignty and security, as well as the socio-economic state of the Moldovan people. I am certain that the citizens of the Republic of Moldova realize this," the diplomat said.

According to him, Washington and Brussels "are already actively working to keep the current Moldovan leadership in power, since it obediently follows orders to turn the country into yet another 'anti-Russia.'" "In Moldova, the West is using those political tactics previously tested in the Baltics and Ukraine," Polishchuk stressed. "It encourages lawlessness, banning political parties, bringing criminal charges against opposition politicians under contrived pretexts and clearing the information space of alternative points of view," he explained.

The diplomat noted that "nowadays, it is frequently noted that in order to obtain the results the West needs at the presidential election and the October 20 referendum on Eurointegration, methods far from democratic will be used in Moldova." For example, according to Polishchuk, "Moldovan experts are already registering the instances of lobbying and manipulating the electoral process," "in violation of the election code, the authorities have already practically launched the propaganda campaign which should have started on August 20." And in order to definitely surpass the minimal turnout threshold, Moldova’s Central Election Committee is developing the option of a single ballot for the presidential election and for the 'Euroreferendum,'" the diplomat pointed out.

That said, he added that much like at the 2020 presidential election, "high hopes are being placed on the Moldovan diaspora in the West," which "four years ago brought more than one-quarter of the vote to the current president who owes her victory to it." "Recently, a mail-in voting was approved for Moldovan citizens in the US, Canada and several western European countries. This same opportunity is not provided for the Moldovan diaspora in CIS countries," Polishchuk concluded.