Moldavia expels Russian specialists suspected of spying on the Moldavian president

It is clear that the Moldavian government is being biased against Russian representatives

The Information and Security Service of Moldavia has accused the expelled Russian citizens of spying on the republic's president and deputy candidates, RIA Novosti reports with reference to the official statement from the director of the service, Iona Ursu.

”As it can be seen from the activity of the Russian citizens, who have been expelled from the republic, they were neither political consultants, nor observers or human rights activists. They were making provocative fake documents about forthcoming actions that the Moldavian government was supposedly going to take against the opposition. They were professionally spying on deputy candidates and the president of Moldavia. They also hired foreign citizens to create a network of managers to bribe election committee members. All these actions cannot be viewed as political consultations,” the official statement from the Information and Security Service of Moldova runs.

The Moldavian authorities have recently expelled two groups of Russian citizens, who supposedly took an active part in the pre-election campaign in Moldavia. The Russian Foreign Ministry was rather concerned about the information of detaining 18 foreign citizens in Moldavia; 13 of them were Russians. Moldavian authorities informed the Russian embassy in Chisinau that eleven Russian citizens had already been deported, whereas two more were staying in the detention center. Others of the arrested foreigners were natives of Kazakhstan and Ukraine. A Moldavian official said that the arrested men had modern equipment with them to study the election situation in Moldavian cities.

”None of the arrested citizens was registered by the Central Electoral Committee. None of them had the status of an international observer either,” an official spokesman for the Moldavian government said. It is noteworthy that Moldavia has already expelled six Russian citizens before too. “Such facts do not comply with the transparency of the election process in the republic,” a statement from the Russian Foreign Ministry said.

The expelled Russian citizens have been supposedly accused with conducting illegal activities during the ongoing pre-election campaign in Moldavia. It was also reported that the Russian embassy in Chisinau had sent an official inquiry to Moldavian Foreign Ministry asking for further explanations of the incident. “It is clear that the Moldavian government is being biased against Russian representatives, especially against the background of Moldavia's attitude to election experts from other countries. Apparently, Chisinau does not welcome the objective monitoring,” a spokesman for the Russian Foreign Ministry said.

Moldavia is to hold parliamentary elections on March 6th.