After crossing the border from Ukraine, Olga Salko spent her first days in Moldova in Talmaza, a place she calls a “beautiful village on a hill”. It was a far cry from the horror she left behind in her husband’s home town near Mykolaiv.
In Talmaza, Salko stayed with an elderly woman who volunteered to host her along with her sister, Taiyana, and her three-year-old daughter, Sophia.
Salko, 36, and her family are one of many who have been welcomed into Moldovan homes, in Salko’s case just hours after arriving in Chișinău, Moldova’s capital city. In the past month, Ukraine’s small neighbour has received approximately 370,000 Ukrainian refugees, who have been met at the borders with acts of kindness from locals who have rallied to host and support them.
But Moldova, one of the poorest nations in Europe, is also learning how badly war relief can drain resources as conflict creeps nearer to its eastern border with Ukraine.
Abeer Etefa, a spokesperson for the World Food Programme, said so far, Moldova is the only country bordering Ukraine where the WFP is providing support for refugees – help that has come at the government’s request. “The capacity of the local community to continue to help these people will run out,” Etefa said, adding that the WFP intends to give financial stipends to host families as well as food aid to refugees.
Still, many fear that relief efforts will come up short if the war in Ukraine continues. Russia has advanced around Odesa, close to Moldova’s border. If Odesa comes under attack, it is likely to prompt a new wave of refugees fleeing the intensifying violence.
Meanwhile, experts in the region have warned that a disinformation campaign is under way, designed to spread panic among local communities. Videos in which people complain of Ukrainian refugees’ ingratitude, aggression, Russophobia or wealth are being widely shared on Moldovan social media.
“It’s clear that these posts are orchestrated,” said Anastasia Nani, from Moldova’s Centre for Independent Journalism. “They look the same, use the same words and have the same messages,” she added, bringing up a montage put together by the independent Moldovan outlet Newsmaker, which proves her point.
“There are people taking small incidents and amplifying their importance,” said Petru Macovei of Moldova’s Association of Independent Press.
Valeriu Pașa from Watchdog, a Moldovan thinktank, adds: “We have noticed a change in the Kremlin’s tactics on social media.” Russian troll farms “are now hunting for authentic social media posts that fit their agenda and artificially making them viral”.
“A video that has 12,000 shares but only 16 comments is clearly artificially viral,” Pașa commented. “Fake accounts they have created throughout the years, in the whole region, promote their narratives. You can see content with reactions from profiles from Hungary, Georgia, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, who have nothing to do with the local realities spoken about in the original posts,” Pașa said.
“Unfortunately, Moldova has many Russian agents of influence,” Macovei said – including politics and the media. Four of the country’s 10 most watched TV channels are Russian re-transmissions with some local content. The country’s Committee for Exceptional Situations has brought back a law that bans news bulletins from countries that have not ratified the European Convention on Transfrontier Television – including Russia. “But the war gets represented in a distorted way even in these channels’ local news programmes,” Macovei said. Several channels were fined by Moldova’s Audiovisual Council for presenting a “unilateral” Russian perspective on the security crisis.
“Beyond news, I also saw them broadcast a proliferation of triumphalist Soviet-era films on the Red Army,” Nani added.
Moldova’s president, Maia Sandu, has asked the international community to help with the cost of hosting refugees from Ukraine. This week, the US pledged $30m (£23m) to Moldova to assist with relief efforts. The European Union earlier pledged €90m (£70m) for support in Ukraine and Moldova. Money from both will go to UN agencies and local civil society organisations.
Olga Ghilca, a volunteer with Moldova for Peace, a group that started helping with relief efforts soon after Russia invaded Ukraine, says they are doing their best to prepare for more refugees but she fears an influx would overwhelm them. “Nobody can promise that we can deal with that because we’ve never dealt with that,” she said.
