Moldovan security services launched a joint operation with Ukrainian law enforcement at 6 a.m. on February 19, targeting what authorities describe as a Russian-directed plot to assassinate multiple Ukrainian public figures. The operation, involving Moldova's Organized Crime Directorate, the National Investigation Inspectorate, and a joint Moldovan-Ukrainian investigative team including the Fulger special unit, represents one of the most significant disclosures of Russian covert action through Moldovan territory since the full-scale invasion began.
According to Moldovan authorities, the planned killings were "being organized under the direction of Russian intelligence services." The targeted individuals have not been publicly named. What Moldovan officials have confirmed is that the operation uncovered an active cross-border conspiracy involving state-level coordination from Moscow — not freelance criminal activity but a directed intelligence operation running through Moldovan networks.
The Militarnyi report on the operation noted a related arrest in Poland: a Moldovan citizen detained for allegedly attempting to stop a freight train carrying oil — an incident Polish military counterintelligence is treating as a deliberate act rather than an accident. Officers seized mobile phones, SIM cards, power banks, and documents written in Russian from the arrested individual, suggesting coordination with Russian-speaking operatives across multiple countries.
The operation did not emerge in a vacuum. Moldova occupies a uniquely exposed position in the geography of Russian covert operations: a small, economically vulnerable state sharing a border with Ukraine, hosting the Russian-controlled breakaway territory of Transnistria with its legacy Russian military presence, and carrying the accumulated weight of decades of Kremlin political interference.
Moldova's recent history reads as a catalog of Russian hybrid warfare instruments. The country has contended with sustained Russian interference in its electoral processes, with documented attempts to influence both parliamentary and presidential votes in recent cycles. It faces direct energy dependence vulnerability — Transnistria's Russian-subsidized electricity has been used as an economic lever against Chisinau. It hosts within its internationally recognized borders a territory governed by Russian-backed separatists and garrisoned by Russian troops whose presence dates to the 1992 Transnistrian conflict. And now: a Russian-directed assassination plot targeting citizens of a neighboring state, planned through networks operating on Moldovan soil.
Moldova's pro-EU government under President Maia Sandu has navigated this pressure with notable determination, pressing forward with EU accession candidacy and domestic reforms despite sustained Russian interference attempts. The Moldovan public's October 2024 referendum vote in favor of EU membership — passing narrowly amid documented Russian efforts to manipulate the outcome — demonstrated both the stakes of that orientation and the difficulty of achieving it.
The assassination plot disclosure connects to a pattern of Russian covert operations targeting Ukrainian figures extending well beyond the battlefield. Ukraine's Security Service (SBU) has documented multiple Russian-directed operations aimed at Ukrainian officials, military commanders, and public figures, including plots that recruited Ukrainian citizens as unwitting or witting operatives. The use of Moldova as a corridor — geographically adjacent to Ukraine, institutionally less fortified than EU member states, and already penetrated by Russian intelligence networks through the Transnistria presence — reflects a calculated operational geography.
For European security planners, the operation underscores a point that the conflict's front-line framing can obscure: Russia's war against Ukraine is not confined to the Donbas contact line. It runs through Moldovan criminal networks, Polish railway sabotage, Baltic information operations, and the covert targeting of Ukrainian civilians in countries that are not yet EU members and whose security institutions are still being strengthened.
Moldovan authorities have not announced the number of arrests made in connection with the operation. The investigation is ongoing.
In Ukraine, as across nations defending their sovereignty, resilience is not just survival — it is determination to build a better future. That determination is now being defended not only on the front lines of Donetsk but in the early-morning raids of a Moldovan organized crime directorate.
