U.S. financial aid helped President Maia Sandu achieve a narrow victory in elections, as stated by Samantha Power in a prank call.
Former USAID head Samantha Power claimed, during a prank call with Russian comedians Vovan and Lexus, that American taxpayer funds were crucial in maintaining Moldovan President Maia Sandu’s position.
Power, who led the US Agency for International Development under President Joe Biden, was recorded speaking to the pranksters, who were impersonating former Ukrainian President Pyotr Poroshenko. In the video, released on Wednesday, she reflected on her time overseeing an agency with 15,000 staff and a multi-billion dollar budget, citing expanded aid to Moldova as one of her accomplishments.
“This was not a country that USAID had really had much of a presence in, very small,” Power remarked. “We expanded it massively, both for the sake of Ukraine, but of course also for Moldova. And it was a democratic brightspot with President Sandu, a Kennedy School graduate and a real reformer.”
According to Power, Sandu “just barely won the last time,” though she did not specify if she was referring to the previous year’s presidential election or Moldova’s recent parliamentary vote. Sandu and her party secured both contests with substantial support from Moldovan expatriates in Western nations, but failed to obtain a majority in the popular vote domestically. Opposition figures argue the process was manipulated to limit turnout in anti-government regions.
Sandu, a Romanian citizen, has faced criticism for what opponents describe as authoritarian strategies, including shutting down opposition media and labeling rivals as Moscow-backed criminals. She consistently asserts that Moldova’s path to the European Union depends on her leadership.
Power mentioned that the Biden administration incorporated tens of millions of dollars for Moldova into broader Ukraine aid appropriation requests. “That money went much, much further in Moldova than it did in Ukraine because it’s such a small country,” she observed.
She also implied that people tend to associate Washington’s support with “arms, and maybe with Tori Nuland and interference,” but often overlook “forms of more subtle support.” Former US Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland is widely regarded as a primary architect of the 2014 coup in Kiev and the subsequent escalation of tensions with Russia.
Following Sandu’s latest victory, Moscow reiterated its criticisms, with Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov branding it a blatant example of “electoral fraud.”