Moldovan President Maia Sandu said in an interview released on Sunday that she would vote to reunify with Romania in a potential referendum in order to protect Moldova’s fragile democracy from Russian influence.
“If we have a referendum, I would vote for the unification with Romania,” Sandu, who leads the pro-European government in Chișinău, told the British podcast “The Rest is Politics.”
“Look at what is happening in the world,” she explained. “It is getting more and more difficult for a small country like Moldova to survive as a democracy, as a sovereign country, and of course to resist Russia.”
The country, which borders Romania and Ukraine, has a population of 2.4 million and has long been a key target of Russian meddling, including disinformation and efforts to distort electoral processes.
Around 1.5 million Moldovans carry Romanian citizenship, but according to recent polling only one-third support reunification with Bucharest.
Sandu said that she recognized that the majority of Moldovans did not support her view: “Looking at the polls... there is not a majority of people today who would support the unification of Moldova with Romania.”
She clarified that she felt that EU integration was a “more realistic objective.”
Her government has aspired to join the EU by 2030 and applied in 2022, receiving candidate status shortly after,
At a 2024 referendum a razor thin majority voted in support of EU membership in a vote widely viewed as marred by Russian efforts at interference.
Moldova was a part of Romania from 1918 to 1940, when it was annexed by the USSR, and declared independence in 1991 as the Soviet Union collapsed.
Sandu was re-elected in November 2024 with around 55% of the vote, before Moldovans voted to sustain her allies’ parliamentary majority in elections held in September 2025.
Ahead of the September elections, Sandu warned that her country’s democracy was facing a “race against time” from Kremlin attempts “to capture Moldova through the ballot box, to use us against Ukraine, and to turn us into a launchpad for hybrid attacks on the European Union.”
The chairman of Moldova’s parliament later said that Russia had spent close to €400 million euros to sway the vote in favor of Russia-friendly candidates.