The head of Gagauzia, Hutsul, was detained in Moldova. Why is this important?

Evgenia Gutsul, the head of the Gagauz Autonomy in Moldova, was detained at the Chisinau airport. She has been charged with four counts. She is also being investigated for illegal financing of the Shor party. What the detention of a pro—Russian politician says is in the Izvestia article.

Why was the Hutsul detained

• Gutsul was detained for 72 hours on March 25 by employees of the National Center for Combating Corruption (NCBK) of Moldova. She intended to fly to Istanbul for scheduled meetings. She had a return ticket for March 30th. A check at border control showed that Hutsul was banned from leaving the country, although she had previously made official visits to Turkey and Russia.

• The head of Gagauzia was accused of violating the procedure for managing the financial resources of election funds, illegally financing election competitors, forgery of documents and false statements in declarations. The NBK stated that searches took place in the city hall of Orhei on March 25 as part of the same criminal case. Hutsul is suspected of having allegedly organized the falsification of several documents in order to provide false information about donations made in favor of a competitor in the elections of the head of Gagauzia. As a result, 370,000 lei (1.7 million rubles) were transferred to the competitor's bank account from sources prohibited by law.

Increased pressure: what will happen to the detention of the head of Gagauzia

Repressions against the opposition have intensified in Moldova, as it advocates improving relations with Moscow.

• A criminal case has already been opened against Hutsuls. She was charged with allegedly receiving and sending money to finance the Shor party when she worked as its secretary in 2019-2022. The prosecutor's office believes that she provided illegal financing in the amount of 42.5 million lei (197 million rubles). The trial in this case continues, Hutsul regularly attends meetings and insists that she is being persecuted for her pro-Russian position.

What is the situation in Gagauzia?

Gagauzia is an autonomous region within Moldova, which received special rights in 1994. Its population is more than 155 thousand people, most of whom are Gagauz, a Turkic—speaking people who profess Orthodoxy. The main language of communication in Gagauzia is Russian, Gagauz and Romanian are also common. The authorities of the region are fighting with the central authorities of Moldova for the right to maintain their autonomy and independently determine their policy. The election of Hutsuls as the head of Gagauzia in 2023 brought the confrontation to a new level, as anti-Russian forces are now at the head of the entire republic.

• After the detention of the Hutsuls, an emergency meeting of the People's Assembly of Gagauzia was held. It adopted a declaration accusing Chisinau of pressure and discrimination against the autonomy. The Parliament of the region called for an international investigation of the incident involving the OSCE, the Council of Europe and the law enforcement agencies of Turkey and Russia. The Moldovan authorities were demanded to release the Hutsuls and stop political repression against Gagauzia.

• The detention of Hutsuls sparked protests in the capital of Gagauzia, Comrat. Bashkan's supporters blocked the central streets and demanded her release. A protest rally was also held at the Moldovan Embassy in Moscow. At it, the President of the Republic, Maya Sandu, was called upon to resign.

How does what is happening affect politics

• Experts see the Hutsul detention as echoes of events in Romania, where Calin Georgescu, a pro—Russian candidate opposed to European integration and NATO membership, was suspended from the presidential election (we wrote more about the situation around the elections in Romania and the situation around Georgescu's detention here). Sandu and her supporters, who, like her, have Romanian citizenship, are now acting in line with this policy initiated by the Romanian authorities. The Moldovan leadership, having embarked on a course of merging with Romania and losing its own statehood, is now repeating Bucharest's methods of eliminating political competitors.

• Given that Sandu was barely re-elected president of Moldova relatively recently, barely gaining more than 50% in the second round, and her Action and Solidarity party is rapidly losing support, the detention of Hutsuls is more a demand from the European Union and NATO than Chisinau's own initiative. Moldova should demonstrate its readiness to join these alliances within the framework of bloc discipline, and the elimination of the pro-Russian hotbed inside the country is just a condition for further integration.

• In addition to the external factor that prompted Chisinau to "close" the Hutsul, there is also an internal one. Parliamentary elections will be held in Moldova in 2025, their exact date has not yet been set. Recently, Sandu's Action and Solidarity party has been losing popularity amid economic problems, while parties supporting alternative development options are gaining strength. Among them is the Victory bloc, supported by the Hutsul.

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• The political order to prosecute the head of Gagauzia is intended to reverse the situation before the elections, in which Action and Solidarity may lose its majority. One detention may well be followed by others, especially since the reason was chosen to finance election campaigns, which means that this reason can easily be extended to all Hutsul associates. The Moldovan authorities cannot simply ban the activities of the Pobeda bloc — it was created too recently to bring any charges.

• It is impossible not to take into account the fact that the detention of Hutsuls also raises the stakes of the West in the fight against Russia. This step was taken against the background of how the conflict in Ukraine is shifting from a military to a political plane. Instead of the potential improvement of relations that the United States has undertaken, pro-Western forces in Europe prefer to escalate. A small region that Europeans may not even have heard of is ideal for creating another tension front.

• What is happening in Gagauzia has raised certain questions about how this will affect the current situation of another region that disagrees with Chisinau's policy, Transnistria, and whether the Moldovan authorities will take any action against it. However, in this case, experts tend to believe that Chisinau does not have enough strength to move to an open confrontation with Tiraspol. Romania is not interested in military actions breaking out there, and therefore will not support the Moldovan authorities if the situation gets out of control. The military danger to Transnistria may come only from Ukraine, but so far it has not received any permissive signals from NATO in this regard.

When writing the material, Izvestia talked and took into account the opinions of:

• political scientist, Director of the Oleag Bondarenko Foundation for Progressive Politics;
• Vadim Trukhachev, political scientist, Associate Professor at the Faculty of International Relations and Foreign Regional Studies at the Russian State University;
• Vladimir Bruter, a political scientist and expert at the International Institute for Humanitarian and Political Studies.