Russian Socialist Party

Officers of Moldova's National Anticorruption Centre, CNA, on Tuesday evening raided the offices of the Central Electoral Commission in Gagauzia, collecting lists of voters for the election of a new governor held in the autonomous southern region.

The CNA said it found names in the lists of some citizens settled outside the country and of some dead people.

Local elections in Moldova's pro-Russian autonomous region of Gagauzia were won on Sunday by the Ilan Shor Party's candidate, Evghenia Gutul, according to results published by the Electoral Commission in Comrat, the central administrative city in the region.

A Moldovan deputy for the pro-Russian Socialist Party, Alla Dolinta, resigned on Wednesday from parliament and from the Socialist Party of Moldova, PSRM, because of the party's stance on the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

"For over four-and-a-half months, in a neighbouring state, Ukraine, which is essentially my home because my parents were born there, is at war," she said.

Moldovan president Maia Sandu on Sunday promulgated the Informational Security Law, which will ban the broadcast in Moldova of Russian TV news and political analysis.

The law, designed to counter Russian propaganda about the war in Ukraine, says that the ban will still apply after the expiration of the state of emergency established in Moldova after Russia invaded Ukraine.

Several thousand people in Moldova's capital Chisinau took part in an "Immortal Regiment" march on Monday, organised by the pro-Russian Socialist Party, PSRM, many of them breaking a new law that bans the display of symbols glorifying the former Soviet communist regime.

Authorities in Moldova vowed on Monday to do everything necessary to track down and punish those who scrawled symbols of support for Russia's war in neighbouring Ukraine on a cemetery for World War Two Romanian soldiers.

The ambassadors of 22 EU member states issued a joint statement on Thursday afternoon rejecting the public attacks on the EU Ambassador to Moldova, Peter Michalko, by the pro-Russian Socialist Party, PSRM, and Shor Party, led by a fugitive oligarch, Ilan Shor.

Romanian parliamentarians have called on Bucharest to withdraw the Romanian citizenship of the Moldovan Prime Minister, Ion Chicu, after he suggested that Romania was one of the most corrupt countries in Europe, and used harsh language about Romanian officials.

Moldovan prosecutors on Thursday detained four members of the board of the National Bank of Moldova, BNM, all current or former leaders of the bank, in relation to the so-called grand theft of a billion US dollars from the banking system between 2012 and 2014.

Moldova's Prime Minister-designate Ion Chicu was approved by the country's parliament on Thursday, along with his proposed list of ministers who will form the new cabinet following the collapse of the former government led by pro-Western PM Maja Sandu just days prior.

Having formed a list of proposed ministers overnight, Chicu secured the support of 62 out of 101 deputies.