Searching for Geopolitical Direction: The Sources Russian and Romanian Speakers Encountered on Search Engines Prior to Moldova’s 2024 Votes

Since its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, Moldova has oscillated between East and West, or between closer ties with Russia or the EU. Last fall, the country faced this existential question once again. Moldovans went to the polls to select their future president and to determine whether EU accession should be cemented in the constitution. The choice of presidential candidates in the second round predictably boiled down to a pro-Russian and a pro-European candidate—incumbent Maia Sandu, who pioneered Moldova’s EU candidate status, and Alexandr Stoianoglo, a former prosecutor from the autonomous Gagauzia region who received support from the pro-Russian Socialist Party of Moldova. In the end, pro-European sentiments prevailed, but with much smaller margins than anticipated and with a heavy reliance on the Moldovan diaspora living in the West.

The Moldovan media landscape is split unevenly between Romanian- and Russian-language outlets, though many large domestic outlets publish in both languages. Support for or against greater integration with the European Union is not uniform among Romanian or Russian-language outlets (particularly Russian-language outlets affiliated with Western countries or Russian exiles), but the bifurcated media environment reflects the split sentiments of the populace. To gain a more nuanced picture of how this linguistic split influenced the information Moldovans encountered on search services during the presidential elections and referendum, we conducted daily search queries, geolocated in Moldova, on topics relevant to the election in both Romanian and Russian prior to and immediately after the elections. Between September 25–November 5, we ran altogether 80 search queries in Romanian and 113 in Russian every day across three search services (Google, Google News, and Yandex).

We found that:  

• US government-funded media—namely through the Moldovan and Romanian arms of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL)—ranked as the first- and second-most observed websites in Romanian-language search results. US government-funded networks were less prominent in Russian-language search results, though three US-funded outlets ranked among the 50 most observed domains in our study. This suggests that, at least in search results, embattled US government-funded outlets under the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM) provided a counterbalance to Russian narratives.
• Unsurprisingly, Russian state-media outlets were far more prominent in Russian-language search results than in Romanian-language ones, though only one outlet—RIA Novosti—ranked among the ten most observed outlets in our study. In total, there were 12 Russian state-media or Kremlin-affiliated outlets that appeared in search results in our study, with most of those sites appearing in Russian-language search results on Yandex, the Russian-owned search engine.
• There were multiple dual-language news outlets and aggregators, led by newsmaker[.]md, that appeared in both Romanian and Russian-language search results. This indicates that there is at least some crossover in the information environment, despite linguistic divides.
• Moldovan news outlets with financial support from Western countries ranked high among the most prominent websites in both Romanian and Russian-language searches, including local news media for Russian speakers in the autonomous region of Gagauzia and in Moldova’s second largest city of Bălți.
• Russian state media outlets RT and Sputnik, whose websites were banned in Moldova in 2023, still appear in Moldova search environments, primarily on Yandex.

Moldova’s Media Landscape

As with many former Soviet republics, Moldova experienced a tumultuous transition from a state-run to a commercial news media market in the 1990s. This transition created opportunities for domestic companies to acquire control over media outlets, while Russia preserved its influence with Moscow-based media outlets, including foreign channels available only through Russian distribution networks.

In 2014, the Moldovan government signed a trade association agreement with the EU, choosing it over the Russian-dominated Eurasian Economic Union (EEU), a choice that sparked the Euromaidan revolution in Ukraine that same year. To pursue closer integration with the EU, the Moldovan government stood in opposition to pro-Kremlin president Igor Dodon and sought ways to diminish the influence of Russian state-controlled news outlets. In 2018, Moldova’s parliament passed the so-called “media propaganda” law, which banned rebroadcasting of Russian television programs. After the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Moldova’s Information and Security Service closed Sputnik’s local bureau and blocked access to more than 70 Russian and pro-Russian websites. In September 2023, in another blow to Russia’s information influence, Moldova suspended Prime TV, its most popular TV channel, which until 2018 retransmitted programs from Russian state-controlled Channel One.

These measures coincided with a decline in public trust in Moldova towards Russian-language media. In 2021, 42.9% of survey respondents expressed trust in Russian or Russian-language news media in Moldova; in 2023, this number dropped to 27.5%. According to Reporters Without Borders, Moldova’s press freedom ranking improved from 89th in 2023 to 40th in 2024, surpassing neighboring Romania. Part of this progress is a result of continuous investments in the sustainability and professionalism of independent local press. Because of a weak advertising market, independent and investigative journalism in Moldova mostly relies on international funding.

The influence of Russian news media remains strongest in the breakaway region of Transnistria and the autonomous Gagauzia. The former unofficially split from Moldova in 1991 with support from the Soviet 14th Guards Army, which was based there and whose veterans remained in the region after the Soviet Union’s dissolution. Gagauzia has maintained its autonomous status since 1994, and after Moldova’s trade association agreement with the EU in 2014, the region held an internationally unrecognized referendum to join the EEU instead. In 2023, Gagauzians elected a pro-Kremlin governor, Evghenia Guțul, who visited Moscow to meet with Russian President Vladmir Putin the day after her election. Generally, media outlets in these two regions take a pro-Kremlin position, although Western donors strive to balance these viewpoints by supporting several local news outlets.

Selection of Search Terms

To test how language influenced the information sources Moldovans encountered on search services prior to the election, ASD, with assistance from regional partners, created a list of 80 Romanian-language search terms related to people, places, or topics relevant to the election. An ASD analyst then and translated those terms into Russian (Table 1). In the Russian-language translations, we included both spellings of Moldova and Moldavia: the former spelling has been used by Moldova since gaining its independence, while the latter was used during the time of the Soviet Union and is still used in Russia. We also accounted for the flexible syntax structure in the Russian language and reversed word order within search phrases whenever it was appropriate.

The selected key phrases reflect Moldova’s geopolitical situation, such as: claims of European, US, and Russian influence; European integration and relations with Russia; Romanian support for Moldova; and the threat of a potential escalation of the Russian war in Ukraine. The selected search terms also reflect the role of the Moldovan diaspora in voting, the country’s fight with corruption, election integrity issues, farmer protests against EU tariffs, and the country’s religious split between the Russian and Romanian Orthodox churches. We also included terms related to the breakaway regions (Transnistria and Gagauzia), as well as the names of all major political figures in the country.

Russian-Language Search Results

We analyzed the 50 most frequently occurring domains in search results using our selected Russian-language key phrases. These domains accounted for 54,920 search results, more than half of all Russian-language results in our study. We then evaluated country ownership of these domains, based on registration information available on news media websites (Figure 2). Predictably, 17 of these 50 websites belong to news media currently or originally based in Russia, while 13­ outlets are based in Moldova. Russian keywords also generated results from seven Ukrainian news outlets, three US outlets, two EU outlets, and one German, Turkish, and British outlet each, along with NATO’s official website. We labeled websites such as Wikipedia, YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram as “user-generated” (UG) to reflect that, despite being affiliated with US companies, content posted to those sites come from a global community of users and media outlets.

Alternatively, if we ranked countries not by the total number of domains among the 50 most observed websites but by the total number of individual URLs associated with those domains, the picture of country ownership looks rather different (Figure 3). With those parameters, nearly half of Russian-language search results (45%) featured Moldovan media outlets, while Russian news media accounted for just more than 20% of search results across the 50 most frequently occurring domains. User generated platforms came in third with 9%, while Ukrainian and US websites each accounted for 5% of observed URLs.

The most observed website in Russian-language search results was NewsMaker, a privately owned online news outlet that, according to the Media Ownership Monitor, publishes “news, analysis, long reads, solution journalism, podcasts, and newsletters” in both Russian and Romanian. The site receives funding from Western donors, such as Freedom House, the European Endowment for Democracy, the Open Society Foundation, the International Fund for Public Interest Media, and the National Democratic Institute. The three other most observed domains were the Chișinău-based independent news agency IPN, the Russian version of Wikipedia, and the Russian-language service of German state-owned broadcaster Deutsche Welle.

Local and regional news outlets also regularly surfaced in Russian-language queries about the election and referendum. This is likely a result of the inclusion of the two pro-Russian regions of Moldova, Gagauzia and Transnistria, in our keyword list, which would explain the prominence of their regional news outlets in search results. But one of the most observed domains that showed up across various search terms was esp[.]md, an independent news portal for the country’s second largest city of Bălți, where about half of the population speaks Russian. Another regional news outlet, Nokta, is the sixth-most observed domain and covers news of Gagauzia. Unlike other more pro-Kremlin websites, such as gagauzinfo[.]md (20th) and gagauzia[.]md (40th), Nokta is privately owned and financed by Western donors, including the EU and the United States. Among our 50 most observed search results, only one domain, pro-Kremlin novostipmr[.]com (12th), focuses on the breakaway Transnistria region.

News media based or started in Russia constitute a quarter of all search results, including several prominent state-controlled news agencies that share pro-Kremlin propaganda, such as RIA Novosti (ria.ru, 10th), Interfax (Interfax.ru, 13th), and TASS (tass.ru, 22nd). However, our results also featured several domains that belong to independent news media that started their work in Russia but had to relocate to the West after the start of the war in Ukraine, such as Meduza (meduza.io, 38th) and Novaya Gazeta (novayagazeta.eu, 41st).

Although they were not among the 50 most observed domains in Russian-language search results, RT’s Russian-language outlet and multiple Russian-language Sputnik outlets were present in search results, despite being banned in Moldova. RT Russian (russian.rt[.]com) surfaced 45 times, Sputnik Moldova’s Russian site (md.sputniknews[.]ru) appeared 202 times, Sputnik Belarus (sputnik[.]by) 24 times, Radio Sputnik (radiosputnik[.]ru) nine times, and Sputnik Tajikistan appeared eight times. Although they were not as prevalent as other Russian state-backed outlets, both RT Russian and Sputnik Moldova appeared among the top three search results on at least one day in queries related to farmers’ protests in Moldova and the EU and in queries related to the Moldovan diaspora living in Russia.

There were also several pro-Kremlin domains that EUvsDisinfo labeled as spreading disinformation among the 50 most observed sites, including Eurasia Daily (eadaily[.]com, 11th) and the online news aggregator bloknot-moldova[.]ru (36th). The former has been accused of spreading conspiracy theories about the COVID-19 pandemic and deploying information operations against Russia’s neighbors, including Moldova, Belarus, Estonia, Armenia, Georgia, and Ukraine, among others. The latter is directly affiliated with the pro-Kremlin Party of Socialists of the Republic of Moldova and belongs to the Russian international information network plainnews.ru with sister websites in other countries.

Although not as prominent as Russian state-funded media, there were multiple occurrences of US government-funded Russian-language media among the 50 most observed websites, led by Current Time (currenttime.tv, 14th most observed), a 24-hour TV and digital outlet associated with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) and Voice of America. Voice of America’s Russian service (golosameriki.com,16th) and Radio Svoboda, the Russian-branch of RFE/RL (Svoboda.org, 30th), were also among the 50 most observed domains.

To test for differences in how studied search services treated US and Russian government-funded media, we also compared occurrences of those media outlets on US-based Google and Google News and Russian-based Yandex. To make this comparison, we identified all Russian and US government-funded media that appeared among the 50 most observed domains, as well as RT and Sputnik, and compared how often each website appeared across all Russian-language queries on each search service (Figure 4).

Our results show that while banned Russian outlets (Sputnik and RT) rarely appeared on Google or Google News, there was no substantial difference in the number of non-sanctioned Russian state-funded outlets that surfaced on Google search products and on Yandex. However, US government-funded outlets appeared almost exclusively on Google News (2,525 results) and Google Search (526 results), with almost no presence on Yandex (26 results).

Moldova’s Russian-language media landscape that appeared in search results closely mimics the battle for hearts and minds happening in the country. There was a definite presence of pro-Kremlin news media, some of which have been known to spread disinformation, but there were also news outlets that strive to adopt Western journalistic standards. It is also noteworthy that some of these news outlets serve local news markets, competing with the pro-Kremlin positions of local governments, especially in Gagauzia. The Russian-language services of the BBC, Deutsche Welle, Euronews, and USAGM outlets were also an integral part of this environment, competing with Russian state-controlled news media.

Romanian-Language Search Results

As with our analysis of Russian-language search results, we focused on the 50 most frequently occurring domains that appeared in Romanian-language search results (Figure 5). These 50 domains appeared 66,167 times, accounting for almost 75% of all results generated by Romanian-language queries. Roughly half (52%) of those domains are associated with Moldovan media outlets, while just over a quarter (28%) are associated with Romanian outlets. User-generated domains accounted for 10% of all results, with US, EU, French, and German-based news outlets all accounting for less than 5% of results (Figure 6).

When we ranked countries not by the number of domains but by the total number of observed URLs associated with the 50 most observed domains (Figure 7), Moldovan news outlets remained the most visible, with the same percentage of observed URLs as observed domains (52%). Despite having only two domains among the 50 most observed domains, the United States had the second most observed URLs (19%), driven by two US-government funded outlets that ranked as the most and second most observed outlets in Romanian-language searches in our study. Outlets based in Romania accounted for 17% of all URLs from the 50 most observed domains.

The most observed website (moldova.europalibera.org, 8,469 observations) by a wide margin was the US government-funded RFE/RL’s Moldovan service and the second-most observed website (Romania.europalibera.org, 4,420 observations) was RFE/RL’s the Romanian service. Those two websites remarkably accounted for almost 15% of all Romanian-language search results. As with Russian-language search results, US government-funded Romanian-language outlets were far more prominent on Google Search and Google News than on Yandex. The latter search engine surfaced only 254 occurrences of the two RFE/RL sites, accounting for just 2% of all observations in our study.

The two RFE/RL outlets also enjoyed remarkable visibility across a range of search queries and topic areas. On the Moldovan version of RFE/RL, more than 250 different articles appeared in search results, with more than 200 of those articles appearing as the first result for a given query on at least one day of our study. This indicates that US government-funded outlets were not just prevalent but prominent in Romanian-language search results—at least on Google products—ahead of the Moldovan election and referendum.

Russian state-funded outlets did not find similar success, with no outlets appearing among the 50 most observed Romanian-language sources in our study. No Russian sources appeared on either Google or Google News, but even on Yandex, there were just 75 combined observations of Russian state-funded sources, split almost evenly between Sputnik Moldova (md.sputniknews[.]com) and Sputnik Moldova-Romania (ro.sputniknews[.]com). Those 75 observations represent less than one-third of the total observations of US government-funded sources on Yandex, a clear reversal from Russian-language search results.

Cross-Over Outlets

Despite the clear differences in the news outlets—particularly foreign state-funded outlets—shown to Romanian and Russian-speaking audiences in Moldova, there were multiple outlets that publish in both languages that appeared among the 50 most observed sites in both our Russian and Romanian search results. Besides USAGM-affiliated websites that appeared in search results for both languages, there were several international outlets that straddled linguistic divides. This includes Deutsche Welle, the German state-funded broadcaster, which was the fourth-most observed site in Russian-language results and the 27th most observed site in Romanian-language results. But many of the most prominent outlets that appeared in both Romanian and Russian-language search results were local Moldovan information portals our outlets.  As noted, the most observed domain in Russian-language searches was the bilingual Moldovan news outlet newsmaker.md, which also ranked as the eighth-most observed website in Romanian-language searches. In addition, the Romanian-language version of the independent weekly newspaper Ziarul de Garda (ZDG), which focuses on corruption investigations among public officials and politicians, was the fifth-most observed website in Romanian-language search results and the seventh-most observed site in Russian-language results.

NOI, a popular Moldovan online information portal, ranked as the fifth-most observed domain in Russian-language search results and the seventh-most observed domain in Romanian-language results. While Freedom House has described NOI’s coverage of political processes as objective, EUvsDisinfo has alleged that, in at least a few instances, the website has has spread false narratives. Similarly, the third-most observed domain in Romanian-language search results, stiri[.]md, is the Romanian-language counterpart of a Russian-language news aggregator, point[.]md, which was not among the 50 most observed Russian-language sites. Stiri[.]md was ostensibly developed to give Romanian speakers a better understanding of Russian speakers’ viewpoints in Moldova. But both news aggregators are owned by Simpals LLC, which has had well-known business dealings with Russian companies. According to an analysis conducted by PressCheck[.]md, both stiri[.]md and point[.]md lack transparency of authorship and point[.]md has occasionally published unverified information, which has resulted in the dissemination of false, incomplete, or misleading narratives. The editorial standards and geopolitical alignment of bilingual outlets in our study differ, but the fact that several of the most observed news outlets were based in Moldova and spanned linguistic divides suggests that the information environment may not be as segmented as one would expect.

Conclusion

With parliamentary elections scheduled to be held later this year in Moldova, the country’s geopolitical direction will once again be in question for voters. At a time when geopolitical alliances and fault lines are shifting by the day, the national, regional, and global environment that will serve as a backdrop to those elections is uncertain. What is certain, however, is that the outcome will again be of interest to a range of foreign actors, particularly those in Moscow. This, of course, means that the battle to influence Moldovans—whether through overt or covert means—will again be a dominant feature of the election period. In search environments, at least, our analysis of the period before the 2024 Moldovan elections presents a complex picture of the sources Moldovans are likely to encounter before this year’s election.

Unsurprisingly, we found some clear differences in the types of outlets shown to audiences in Moldova depending on whether queries were conducted in Romanian or Russian, but those differences were perhaps less stark than anticipated. For starters, there were a handful of bilingual outlets and information portals that appeared among the most observed domains in both Russian- and Romanian-language search results in our study. This suggests that there is at least some informational cross-over despite the linguistic and cultural divides in the country, though the editorial standards of those sources varied.

As expected, Russian state-backed sources were significantly more prevalent in Russian-language search results than in Romanian-language ones, especially on Yandex. Kremlin-aligned outlets, however, were not ubiquitous in Russian-language spaces, as they often surfaced alongside outlets funded by Western donors or governments—including several outlets funded by the USAGM. In search results generated by Romanian-language queries, USAGM’s footprint was even larger, with the Moldovan and Romanian versions of RFE/RL ranking as the most and second-most observed Romanian-language websites in our study, respectively. The prominence and prevalence of USAGM networks in both Russian and Romanian-language search results is especially notable given that those outlets recently have been gutted by the Trump administration. The absence of funding is likely to be especially acute in Russian-speaking Transnistria and Gagauzia, where USAGM news outlets served as an alternative to pro-Kremlin narratives targeting these regions. It is therefore very possible, if not likely, that if we ran a similar study prior to the next Moldovan elections, we would encounter a decidedly less balanced media environment.