Weekly Roundup

November 27, 2022

Welcome back to Moldova Matters! In this weekly roundup we will check in with the top stories of the week in Politics and Economics. Subscribe to Moldova Matters to get our Weekly Roundup and other content sent right to your email! And consider becoming a paid subscriber to support our work at Moldova matters. For just $5 / month, the price of a nice coffee, you can support this work and help us expand into even better content!

Moldova in Darkness

On Wednesday, Russia again conducted a massive strike against electrical infrastructure in Ukraine plunging most of the country into darkness and forcing the emergency shutdown of at least one nuclear power plant after it became disconnected from the grid. These attacks resulted in a drop in frequency across the high voltage grid causing automatic cutoffs that cascaded from Ukraine to Moldova and resulted in a near total blackout across the country. Chisinau was completely without power resulting in a collapse in the public transportation network as electric trolleybuses just stopped wherever they were in the road, and passengers had to disembark and try to walk to their destinations. These new obstacles, lack of street and traffic lights, and the fact that lots of people left work early and went home created a massive traffic jam across the entire city.

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Transnistria was also completely without electricity during the outage. Adding to the confusion, the cellular phone networks of Orange, Moldcell and MoldTelecom all went down. This was a result in the failure of the 4G phone network - but not the internet. Internet connections through the service providers continued to work without interruptions.

Addressing the situation, President Sandu used some of her harshest language against Russia to date saying:

“Russia has plunged Moldova into darkness. Russia's war in Ukraine is killing people, destroying houses and energy infrastructure. (…) We cannot trust a regime that leaves us without light and heat, that deliberately kills people just to keep other peoples in poverty and humiliation. No matter how difficult it is now, our only path, the future path of Moldova must be in the direction of the free world,”

The attacks were targeting Ukraine and only hit Moldova because of the overlapping grid near Odessa. This allowed power to be restored in Moldova pretty quickly with most parts of Chisinau regaining power in one to two hours and the rest of the country getting power in phases over the course of the evening and night. Ukraine meanwhile remains largely without power, or in a state of controlled rolling blackouts. If Russia chose to target Moldova’s power grid by striking the transmission infrastructure in Ukraine that connects Moldova to Romania, the impact would be much more severe and the time required to restore power substantially longer (see last Week’s Roundup for maps of this infrastructure). Effectively Moldova’s power grid has a single point of failure with this line traveling through Ukraine.

Outages in Ukraine have also affected border crossing points which have been seeing regular closures between Moldova and Ukraine as the Ukrainian side loses power and has to stop processing border crossings.

Preparing for Future Outages

This power outage, which affected the entire country and nearly all critical systems in public transit, banking and even many websites that are hosted in Moldova was a wakeup call about what may be coming. The Ministry of Health announced that while there were no life threatening problems in hospitals during the outage, they are not prepared for this scenario. Of 59 hospitals in Moldova, 15 have full backup power by generators, 39 have generators that cover the ICU, operating rooms and critical laboratories, and 5 have no generators at all. In total they have 77 generators and need 55 more.

Individuals are also making preparations for future outages. Online publication Newsmaker published a roundup encouraging people to prepare for power outages by stockpiling candles, buying power banks for mobile phone charging and buying generators if you can afford them and live in a house (rather than an apartment). They also suggest making preparations for prolonged loss of heating but moving the whole family to one room, laying down old carpets for insulation of floors and walls, moving food to the balcony or outside for refrigeration, and investing in camp stoves for cooking.

As the weeks get colder, and the threat of power loss becomes more real, there is a greater recognition that this will be a difficult winter.

Energy Crisis

In addition to power failures caused by direct attacks, Moldova continues to deal with a crisis in energy supply and affordability caused by Russia’s indirect energy warfare against the country. Power companies Premier Energy and FEE Nord have requested that the national energy regulator ANRE allow an additional 34% increase in the price of electricity from 4.77 to 6.38 lei / kWh (Premier Energy). The price one year ago was 1.5 lei / kWh. The companies cite a 60% increase in their costs as well as a reduction in demand to justify the price increase. Effectively, people’s efforts to conserve power are being used as a justification to raise prices on them. It is unlikely ANRE will accept this justification, but a fee increase remains likely due to the underlying supply problems and price increases in buying power from Romania.

Meanwhile, GazProm is again threatening to completely shut off the flow of natural gas too Moldova. They announced this week that Ukraine is “stealing” Moldova’s gas in transit and that they will now completely cut off gas flows into Ukraine except for those sent to Moldova. GazProm claims that since September, 52.52 million cubic meters of gas destined for Moldova never made it there and that if this situation is not “fixed” by November 28th they will decrease supply, or cut off the flow of gas entirely.

Ukraine denies stealing gas, and Infrastructure Minister Spinu explained that Moldova is using storage facilities in Ukraine to stockpile reserves for the winter. Moldova has 200 million cubic meters of gas stored in Ukraine as of November.

Effectively, GazProm is looking for another excuse to limit supply. They additionally hope to bully Moldova into stopping the process of creating strategic reserves so that the country has fewer options in the case of a full cutoff. Many deadlines for the “full cutoff” of gas have come and gone over the past year as Moscow remains unwilling to take the step, or unwilling to cut off Transnistria fully. But they are keeping their options open.

Meanwhile, President Sandu was in Paris this week at the Moldova Support Conference hosted by French President Macron. The French government has pledged 100 million euros for Moldova’s energy security this winter and other donors have been meeting to discuss additional support. President Sandu spoke of the need to support Ukraine and Moldova in these times and highlighted both the energy crisis as well as a “hybrid war” against Moldova in the form of paid protestors, disinformation and attempts to create political instability. She said:

“The coming winter will be difficult, and the coming years will not be easy. For Ukraine. For Moldova. For Europe,” … “We will succeed in defending our democracies and freedoms,”

Hacking and Leaking Continues

Hackers, presumably working for the Russian government, continued to release the private communications of senior government leaders this week in what is clearly a coordinated campaign to discredit the PAS Party and spread disinformation. First was the telegram account of the new Minister of Economy Dumitru Alaiba. Hackers claim that messages show he talks with outside NGOs and EU figures about reforms - not exactly damning claims.

Next up was Acting Prosecutor General Ion Munteanu with a leak of his Telegram communications as well as the entire contents of his yahoo! email account dating back over a decade. Hackers allege that in his emails, he initially complains of bad pay when becoming a prosecutor in 2007, but later made real estate investments, ran a fruit processing company with revenues of 9.8 million euros, and owns companies and properties across Romania including an apartment in Brasov and real estate in Bucharest worth 650,000 euros. There properties are not listed in his income and wealth declaration and are said to be held in the name of his in-laws. It isn’t possible to know what is true and what is planted in this data dump, but we know that some of the conversations are real and this represents real access to these accounts. The hackers clearly state that they are selectively leaking and that there is more to come.

Meanwhile, the Minister of Internal Affairs had her facebook account hacked this week. It was used to post information and to have conversations in the comments by someone pretending to be the Minister.

What is going on here?

Looking at this situation today there are a few things we can say for certain, and lots of open questions. Firstly, it is clear that the hackers have nearly unfettered access to the Telegram accounts of the country’s senior leadership. This doesn’t only include the accounts of the 6 people who have already been leaked, but also President Sandu and Infrastructure Minister Spinu whose accounts were hacked to spread false information, but have not been leaked (yet). Secondly, we have attacks against other platforms including a yahoo! mail account and facebook page.

Effectively, there are 2 possible explanations for what is happening.

1. Hackers have broad access to Telegram accounts somehow, and have opportunistically gained access to other accounts (yahoo! facebook) due to poor security settings, clicking a malicious line, or bad passwords

2. Hackers have broad access to multiple accounts, perhaps by physically compromising people’s phones or devices, and are slowly leaking information in a way that focuses people on telegram and confuses the response.

For the moment, scenario 1 seems the most likely. Yahoo! is not known for its security features and the Acting Prosecutor General’s email address was leaked in a 2015 data breach at Moldovan ISP Starnet along with his personal information. If he reused his password across multiple accounts this too could have been found in a leak. Similarly, the Minister of Interior could have clicked on a link and had her facebook account hacked - this happens all the time.

But what about Telegram?

On the face of it, the idea that you can almost select people at will and break into their Telegram accounts seems far fetched. Telegram after all claims to be a highly secure messaging app. The reality is that there are vulnerabilities… and that this has happened before. In 2019 Puerto Rico Governor Ricardo Roselló resigned after his telegram account was hacked exposing multiple corruption schemes. At the same time much of the leadership of Brazil including their General Prosecutor had their telegram accounts simultaneously hacked. More recently, in August and September of this year much of the senior leadership of Malaysia including the Prime Minister had their Telegram accounts hacked and leaked.

While the details of each case differ, the basic problem is the same. Telegram is linked to a person’s phone number and does not have passwords by default. In the case of Brazil, hackers were able to take over the accounts by requesting a code to link a new device be sent by voice call to the targets phone. They made sure the target couldn’t answer - either by calling them simultaneously or by doing it at night. This sent the code to voicemail. Attackers could then use software to spoof the phone number of the target and call their voicemail. Because spoofing caller ID is very simple, and because most people don’t have a pin code set up on their voicemail, they could gain access to the code.

Telegram claims that they have patched this vulnerability by removing the voicemail / phone call option, but the core problem remains. Accounts are vulnerable by means of their phone number. SIM card cloning, or a similar approach, could allow access to any accounts that do not have 2 factor authentication enabled. Bottom line: it is totally conceivably that a nation state actor could gain broad access to Telegram accounts that do not have 2 factor identification set up.

Political News

This week, a new poll was released by think tank IDIS Viitorul working with CBS Axa and the Academy of Romania. The results show a continued sliding in popularity of the country’s leadership and the PAS Party.

If the election were held tomorrow who would you support?

• PAS 23%

• PSRM (Socialists) 18.2%

• Shor 8.4%

• Total undecided/ no response 22.4%

Which politician do you trust most?

• Igor Dodon 40.1%

• Maia Sandu 35.7% (distrust 60%)

• Ion Ceban 37.1%

This is the first time that former President Dodon has passed President Sandu in the trust / distrust numbers. Though it is worth noting that both of them have distrust outweighing trust, Maia Sandu’s 35.7% trust to 60% distrust is alarming for the President.

Crime and Corruption

Here is a quick overview of the stories making headlines this week:

• In Bulgaria, 3 Moldovans were detained this week in connection with the recent terrorist bombing in Istanbul. All three were from Gagauzia and they were arrested alongside 2 Syrian Kurds. It is unclear what role they played in the terrorist attack but police talked of their past criminal conduct stating: “These people were mainly involved in human trafficking across the border (with Turkey) and smuggling,”

• Moldova has adopted the US Sanctions against Plahotniuc and Ilan Shor. People and companies in Moldova that have done business with these oligarchs have found their accounts frozen. Prosecutors refuse to say who falls under these sanctions citing data privacy laws.

• Parliament has proposed new powers for the Security and Information Service (SIS) explicitly adding counterintelligence activities into the agency’s portfolio. The proposed law will hugely simplify domestic surveillance including wiretapping by creating a special court to approve such warrants.

• Igor Dodon is happy to be out of house arrest and to “talk to people again.” He is traveling around Moldova preparing to join the protests of the Socialist Party against the government.

• Ilan Shor’s US based law firm dropped him in response to US sanctions.

• Bomb threats continue across Moldova, mostly targeting courts and disrupting legal procedures. Police arrested one person for making bomb threats this week. he was found with 4 phone and 8 SIM cards. No more details were provided about his identity or motivations.

• In a major victory, the State Property Agency prevailed in court against AviaInvest resulting in the cancellation of the 49 year concession of the Chisinau airport to the company. AviaInvest, presumed to be owned by Ilan Shor, has now lost control of the airport further depriving the fugitive oligarch of funds. The airport will return to the control of the Moldovan government.

That’s it for this week! Remember - if you’re in Moldova, it’s a great time to buy candles. Whether you’re in Moldova or not, it’s always a great time to turn on 2 factor identification for all your devices, and maybe to set a pin code for your voicemail!

And consider becoming a paid subscriber to support our work at Moldova matters. For just $5 / month, the price of a nice coffee, you can support this work and help us expand into even better content!