An Influence Operation Exposes… another Influence Operation?
Quick Hit: October 31, 2024
Today’s article is a bit different. We’re going to take a moment in this busy campaign and avalanche of daily news to look at one story and see what it says about foreign interference in Moldova - on multiple levels.
Leaked Recordings Connect the FSB to the Stoianoglo Campaign
Yesterday a website called “Lubyanka Leaks” published a series of recordings purporting to be phone calls between Socialist MP Adrian Albu and Yuri Gudilin, a known FSB agent under US sanctions. Gudilin is, at least nominally, a “former” FSB agent turned political consultant focused on Moldova. He was an advisor to Igor Dodon’s 2020 election campaign organizing propaganda from the Moscow based “Troll Factory,” cryptocurrency money laundering schemes for campaign finance and other such dark arts. Since the war started he allegedly attempted to run an operation whereby vandals would break into lots of cars in Chisinau. Then they would blame Ukrainian refugees in order to poison Moldovans against Ukrainians.
Adrian Albu on the other hand is a senior member of the Socialist Party and a top campaign surrogate of Alexandr Stoianoglo. He was Stoianoglo’s proxy at pre-election debates that the candidate did not attend in person.
In the recordings, which are alleged to be from April of this year, they discuss Albu’s travel plans to Moscow, with tickets purchased by Gudilin. Albu is cautious and wants to make sure that he doesn’t stay at any hotels frequented by Moldovans who he is concerned could be Moldovan Security and Information Service (SIS) officers. He says:
“I don’t want to show up at Four Seasons because I don’t want to be noticed by a piece of shit which monitors. Our guys [SIS] are not stupid, trust me on my word. And those faggots that were present in the conference room, there should be a rat among them.”
On his trip to Moscow Albu met with multiple high ranking officials including Nikolai Patrushev, former head of the FSB and known to a be a close, and hawkish, advisor to Putin.
Many of the recordings are focused on how they can better support Ilan Shor. In their calls Gudilin instructs Albu on how they can launder Ilan Shor’s reputation in Moldova. He recognizes how toxic Shor is but notes that “given the level of support he now enjoys here [in Russia]” he will continue to lead the Moldovan effort for the Kremlin. He calls Shor “one big black spot” and suggests that the way to manage this is to make “many many such spots” by painting the current government as dirty. Basically, don’t build Shor up, tear everyone down into the mud with him. The goal was to present the electorate with a situation where…
“It’s just one group of bandits fighting another group of bandits; only that one group points the finger at the other and screams that they are evil.
There’s lots more information about the calls and how top Socialists and Stoianoglo campaign officials are receiving direct instructions from Moscow. Further, it is telling that there is no difference in the Kremlin’s view between the Socialists and Shor - they are all on the same team.
It is important to note that the Socialists claim that these audio files are fake. At the time of writing there has been no independent authentication of the files.
I won’t go further into this here though because you can read it all yourself - the original article reporting on these leaks was written in English. In EU Reporter.
If “EU Reporter” caught your eye it may be because you read my in-depth article tracking English language influence operations in the EU (if not, take a break and read it now - it will help explain what comes next).
An Influence Operation Exposes… an Influence Operation?
So as we’ve written before EU Reporter is not actually a news site. There are no reporters (at least not real ones) and their slogan “independent media for a better debate” is a blatant lie. EU Reporter prints paid articles placed by individuals or PR firms and launders them into the Brussels bubble by making them seem like real news.
Predictably the same article appeared in 2 other websites with the same “business model” - The London Globe and the New York Globe.
So this website was a paid placement and was not written by a journalist. What about the leak?
The website “Lubyanka Leaks” is brand new - registered just 3 days ago on October 28th. The name makes it sound like some kind of established site but really it’s just the one page with the audio files. If you try and navigate to a homepage there is only an administrator login to upload more files to share.
So taken together we have an article written by unknown persons, audio recordings purporting to be intercepts of an FSB handler and Moldovan client and a website set up to distribute the audio information. Why?
Sounds like Spooks…
We can’t rule anything out but it seems highly unlikely that the source of the leaks was in Moldova. If someone had these leaks and wanted them in the press they would simply give them to a local journalist. Hiring a PR company (or similar) to write an article, paying for placement in multiple bogus English language news websites and building a website to host the files would be a hilariously roundabout for someone with ZdG journalist on speed dial.
ZdG, Newsmaker, Agora and others did pick the story up of course. It’s now a huge story in Moldova.
So who would go through the trouble to place a story like this? That’s unclear. What is clear is that someone did. Almost certainly someone outside Moldova. Clearly someone that isn’t a fan of Russia’s meddling in the country’s affairs.
The Irony of course is that for the last year EU Reporter has been part of the operation described in these leaked phone calls. It has run article after article supporting Ilan Shor, condemning the human rights record under Maia Sandu and generally undermining Moldova’s EU path. In short, making more “black spots.”
Just last week the site published an open letter written by Marina Tauber and top Shor party leadership alleging that the EU referendum was falsified. None of these English language articles, planted by PR firms working for Shor or Kremlin linked groups, were designed to target a Moldovan audience. This article seems to have been.
More than anything else the story of this election has been one of external interference and manipulation. It looks like someone else just got in the game.