Best story in Moldovan politics today: a Chișinău city council member, who is in mayor Ceban's MAN party and is under house arrest for allegedly defrauding investors, owns a 5,000-Euro statue. He is now selling it, along with his man-of-the-people 20,000-Euro phone...

... shut down Romanian-language schools in the region and vandalized some of the buildings (source for the picture, and more details on Zona de Securitate's Facebook page). They were reopened, but Romanian-language schools in the region have continued to be subject to ...

... RFE/RL has a very helpful chart showing that money primarily went to provide basic social welfare (purchases of pharmaceuticals and food) and to pay pensions. Most of the donations came from the region's Sheriff holding, which is run by local oligarchs ...

One more instance of Russia claiming that Moldovan and Ukrainian citizens worked together to plan attacks inside RU: the FSB said that two Moldovans helped plan a drone attack in the Moscow region, which it foiled. The story has been all over RU propaganda outlets ...

Finally read this very long frontpage interview from The Economist. It's bad and deserves the criticism it's gotten. Neither the oligarch (Melnichenko) nor the journalist talk about Russian reparations and punishment for its destruction and war crimes in Ukraine, ...

In between two World Cup games, went out and kicked a football around with a friend during a beautiful day on campus at Oakland.

Do you want to know what Telegram channels and portals the pro-Kremlin Transnistrian separatist regime in Moldova hates? The region's security ministry (MGB) has made that amusingly easy by publishing a helpful list. Many of these sources obviously provide actual correct ...

Busy few days for Russian propaganda outlets' coverage of Moldova: lots of stories about a Romania-Moldova unification law proposed by the fringe far-right pro-Russian SOS party in Romania and claims that Russians are being discriminated against at the Chișinău airport ...

Great example of how mayors can enforce international norms and strengthen the ostracism of a criminal state: after the Romanian city of Cluj said it would not allow the Russian anthem or the RU flag to be used during an int'l sports competition it's hosting, RU withdrew ...

One more example of how the Trump era is shattering U.S. soft power in E. Europe: RU propaganda channels in Moldova are praising Rubio for congratulating Russians on RU Day, and are complaining that Chișinău hasn't done the same. So the U.S. is just providing fodder to Kremlin...

Another drone crashed and blew up in the Orhei raion in Moldova on June 8. TV8 has published a helpful map of all confirmed instances since 2022 of pieces of drones and missiles found in Moldova as a result of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Source here (tv8.md/2026/06/08/i...).

Chișinău trolleybus ticket aesthetics. They really haven't changed much from the 1990s and I would absolutely love to see a photobook with these tickets throughout history.

A notable historical development in Moldova that would have been difficult to imagine at the end of the 1400s: a Turkish grocery store in Chișinău (on Mitropolit Varlaam, right by the piața centrală, and I highly recommend it) is selling Ștefan cel Mare chocolate.

A small sampling of Russian propaganda responses to a Russian drone hurting two Romanians after it hit an apartment block in Galați, including claims of a Ukrainian provocation, double standards, and claims of a deflection from Ukraine's use of drones against Russian assets ...

Looking through some of my old archives, and found these treasures from previous Moldovan electoral campaigns. The first one merges the EU with the hammer and the sickle. It's a calendar issued by the Party of Communists during the 2005 electoral campaign, ...

Insightful long article in Romanian from economist Stas Madan about Moldova's relationship to the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). A few highlights in English. First, Madan says that quitting the CIS would have seemed like a sci-fi proposition in 1997, ...

Pro-Russian outlets in Moldova now openly fantasizing about Russia bombing Moldova. Moldavskie Vedomosti, one of the more staunchly pro-Kremlin portals in the country, says Russia could easily bomb Moldova with impunity and that MD would deserve it because ...

Newest stamp haul from Moldova: happy I finally found Soviet stamps with Moldova overprints on them from the early 1990s (only had pictures of these in stamp books until recently). Also found an excellent first day cover of MD's first President, Mircea Snegur, ...

If you stumble upon a French magazine entitled Omerta, whose most recent cover story attacks pro-EU Moldovan authorities, with help from MD politicians like Vlad Filat and Vasile Costiuc, StopFals has a good feature on the far-right and pro-Kremlin figures managing it. ...

On Moldova's Flag Day (April 27), here's an explainer of all of the elements of Moldova's coat of arms. Source: tv8.md/ru/2022/27/0...

Another excellent reason to read the well-documented and accurate G7 Rapid Response Mechanism report about Russia's interference in Moldova's 2025 legisl. election: it made RU's embassy in Canada very mad. You can read the report here (www.international.gc.ca/transparency...)

Following the mayoral campaign in the Bulgarian-majority Taraclia in Moldova. Great example of how ties with Bulgaria are playing a part: a pro-Russian candidate drew a visual of whose help she will get to develop the city: Bulgaria is in the upper-right corner, ...

A striking example of continuing Soviet nostalgia in Moldova's Gagauzia: I'm sifting through data from the 2024 referendum, and this is a snapshot of the addresses of polling stations in some Gagauz villages: lots of Lenin streets, one Karl Marx, ...

After Orban's defeat, pro-Russian groups in Moldova have found another European politician to admire: Bulgaria's Radev, whose party won elections on Sunday. PSRM head I. Dodon portrayed Radev's victory as that of "patriotic" forces who want to revive dialogue with Russia ...

After a winter in our cold Michigan garage, the leuștean (lovage) is already back and ready for some borș and salads. Highly recommend growing it if you want to try out some popular Eastern European flavors (big part of the southeastern Romanian/Bulgarian cuisine I grew up with).

Promo-LEX, one of Moldova's most prominent NGOs, has published a rare poll focusing specifically on Gagauz respondents. Lots to unpack here, but a couple of concerning findings stood out. First, only 6% of respondents support EU integration, ...

After Orban's defeat, Moscow is not wasting any time pivoting to reinforce ties to remaining pro-Kremlin figures within the EU. This Izvestia article just came out, announcing Fico's visit to Moscow in May and predicting that conversations will touch on Slovakia's EU position...

Worth watching one potential consequence of Orban's defeat for Transnistria: the separatist region in Moldova has recently gotten gas with support from Hungary-based MET and Russia (Newsmaker, an MD news portal drew up the attached figure a few months ago) ...

Orban's loss also spells a significant defeat for Igor Dodon, Moldova's most popular pro-Russian politician. Dodon has been lionizing Hungary as a sovereignist beacon against EU integration and globalism, and as a pragmatic model for cooperation with Russia ...

AI slop has finally reached Transnistria: the separatist region in Moldova has released an AI-generated propaganda movie about its history, which Transnistria's foreign minister says he wants to translate into English and show to the international community...