Moldovan President Maia Sandu said that Russia wants to carry out a coup in the republic and bring its proteges to power. According to Radio Liberty's Moldavian service, the president gave details of the plan, which is said to have been developed in Moscow, at a briefing on 13 February.
The Moldovan authorities received this plan from the Ukrainian special services last week. According to the document, Russian supporters under the guise of protests will begin to attack state institutions and take hostages. To carry out this task, presumably, they are going to involve "saboteurs with military training, dressed in civilian clothes", some may be brought from other countries – Russia, Belarus, Serbia and Montenegro. In Moldova itself, according to Sandu, supporters of opposition politicians and entrepreneurs Ilan Shor and Vlad Plahotniuc, who are abroad, can support the coup.
As the president stated, Russia wants to stop Moldova's integration into the European Union and use the republic in the war with Ukraine. Sandu also accused Moscow of organizing the protests that took place in the country last autumn. According to the president, they "did not achieve their goals due to the prompt actions of the security and public order agencies."
On February 10, Moldovan Prime Minister Natalia Gavrilitsa resigned, after which the government was dissolved. The specific reasons for leaving Gavrilitsa were not called. Sandu proposed the candidacy of Dorin Recean, an adviser to the president on defense and national security affairs, who in the past headed the country's Ministry of Internal Affairs, as a candidate for the post of prime minister.
The fact that Russia is going to stage a coup in Moldova was announced on February 9 by President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky, speaking at the EU summit in Brussels. “Recently, I spoke with the President of Moldova, Ms. Sandu, and informed her of what our intelligence had managed to intercept: a detailed Russian plan to destroy the political situation in Moldova. A Russian document that shows who, when and as a result of what actions is going to break Moldova, the democratic order of this country and establish their control over it,” Zelensky said.
