Moldovan security forces on Monday arrested 74 people after carrying out more than 250 searches, actions as a result of which, according to an adviser to President Maia Sandu, a sabotage network trained in Serbia by the Russian military intelligence service GRU for destabilizing operations with the September 28 parliamentary elections, while former President Igor Dodon accuses an action of intimidation of the opposition, AFP and EFE agencies report.
‘Since July, the prosecutor’s Office for Combating Organized Crime and special causes (PCCOCS), together with other agencies, has been investigating the preparation of massive unrest. Following searches 74 people were arrested on Monday, said the agency’s chief prosecutor, Victor Furtuna.
For his part, President Maia Sandu’s national security adviser Stanislav Secrieru said that a network supported by the GRU, the Russian military intelligence service, was ‘destroyed, a network within which’ over 100 Moldovans were trained in Serbia by Russian instructors in violent tactics against police and the use of firearms’. ‘Their mission: organizing pre – and post-election violence.
74 individuals have been arrested and are cooperating with the authorities, ‘ the presidential adviser added in a message on social network X.
According to the Chisinau prosecutor’s Office, the majority of those arrested are between 19 and 45 years old and each would have received an amount of 400 euros. ‘They were found to be affiliated with political parties or groups police chief Viorel Cernauteanu said.
Moldovan security forces announced earlier Monday that they had carried out more than 250 searches in a criminal case for ‘preparing massive unrest and destabilizing actions coordinated from the Russian Federation by criminal elements’ in the legislative elections to be held on Sunday. ‘The Kremlin is throwing hundreds of millions of euros to buy hundreds of thousands of votes on both banks of the Dniester River and abroad. People are intoxicated daily with dozens of lies. Hundreds of people are being paid to cause disorder, violence and scare the world,’ Maia Sandu said in a speech on Monday.
