Authorities in Moldova stated they have identified over one hundred young individuals who are suspected of being trained in Russia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Serbia with the intention of destabilizing the country.
Moldovan police arrested four of them, it was reported on October 17.
The head of the General Police Inspectorate, Viorel Cernăuțeanu, said that the four were arrested a day earlier and were sent to pretrial detention for 30 days, as reported by the Moldovan Service of Radio Free Europe.
Around 100 other individuals have been “documented” and are being investigated, but they remain at large.
It is suspected that they planned the “destabilization” of the Republic of Moldova after the presidential elections and the referendum on October 20.
Cernăuțeanu said that some of the young people have expressed willingness to cooperate with the police.
The police released hidden camera footage from the alleged training sessions in Russia, Serbia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina, where young people can be seen in classrooms, “training for protests” and chanting slogans like “our language is Russian,” “no to dual citizenship,” and “we don’t want to join Europe.”
Authorities in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia have yet to respond to this information. Radio Free Europe sent inquiries to police agencies in both countries.
In the video, which allegedly shows scenes from a training camp in the Balkans, the youths are seen learning how to make explosives and use drones.
According to the police, the young people are around 20 years old and traveled to Russia for training from June to October.
Some of them were also trained in camps in Serbia and Bosnia run by private Russian military groups, Farm and Wagner, Moldovan authorities reported.
“They were trained for national division, destabilization of the constitutional order, tactics for challenging law enforcement agencies, and the use of weapons, which they would use in organized protests or under the pretext of eliminating certain candidates or manipulating elections,” said the head of Moldovan police.
Authorities in Chișinău and several Western governments warned at the beginning of June that Russia and the fugitive oligarch from Moscow, Ilan Shor, plan to organize massive unrest if the Moldovan presidential elections and the referendum on EU membership result unfavorably for the Kremlin.
The presidential elections will take place alongside a referendum that will ask voters whether Moldova should have the opportunity to join the European Union.
The United States reiterated on October 15 that Russia is attempting to undermine the elections, spending millions of dollars to achieve this goal.
The EU also criticized Russia and urged it to stop “provocations and efforts to destabilize Moldova” ahead of the presidential elections and the referendum.
Moldova secured candidate status for EU membership in June 2022 and began accession talks with the bloc earlier this year.
