THE RUSSIA CONNECTIONHow Is the Kremlin Meddling In 2024 Elections? Here Are 5 Tactics.
Russia’s Plan A is always to cooperate with mainstream forces and then corrupt them to align with Russian foreign policy interests. In Plan A fails, Russia falls back on Plan B, which is aligning with far-right parties -– but, at times, even forming alliances with far-left parties. For the Kremlin, the cheapest and most efficient way of boosting its allies is to flood the market with disinformation.
It’s election season in Eastern Europe, and for the Kremlin — bogged down in Ukraine and desperately in need of allies — the stakes are higher than ever.
Moldova is holding a presidential election and referendum on October 20 that could help secure the country’s future in the EU. Romania has just banned a pro-Kremlin rabble-rouser from running in its November presidential election. And the pro-Kremlin, far-right Revival party in Bulgaria is expected to win a sizable presence in parliament after upcoming elections.
So what is the Kremlin — and its populist regional allies — pulling from its playbook to influence the votes?
Don’t Be Too Fussy About Who You Work With
Plan A, according to Anton Shekhovtsov, a Ukrainian political scientist and expert on the far right, “was always to cooperate with mainstream forces” and then corrupt them to align with Russian foreign policy interests.
In some countries, Plan A has worked, with the Kremlin maintaining good relations with politicians such as Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, and Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico.
“The problem for Moscow,” Shekhovtsov said, “is that mainstream forces are less likely than the populists to cooperate with Russia, especially after 2014 (the annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula) and even more so after February 2022 (Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine).”
That has meant increasingly falling back on Plan B. “Russia has tended to align with far-right parties,” said Mitchell Orenstein, professor of Russian and East European studies at the University of Pennsylvania, “but it will also form alliances with far-left parties and even support centrist parties to some extent.”
Acting pragmatically and working with the political fringes can sometimes bear fruit. For years, Revival leader Kostadin Kostadinov operated in extremist circles, once referring to Romany people as “parasites” and venomously castigating migrants. But now his party, which has opposed democratic reforms and advocated for Bulgaria’s withdrawal from NATO, is tipped to finish as high as second in the October 27 parliamentary elections.
