I'm John Batsch with my good colleague, Van Estradner, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

We go from the big picture, Soviet now, Russian psychology, working very effectively on EU and NATO to Moldova, a small republic in the Black Sea Basin, about two and a half million people,

between Romania, it's on the Danube, between Romania and Ukraine.

Once about a time called Bessarabia, it was a Soviet republic during the empire.

It is now independent, except Moscow wants it back.

Moscow has engineered and afforded a party to challenge the establishment.

There was an election.

We expected the Soviets, now Russians, to be successful. They were not. By the

bearers of margins, the establishment continued, but they're frightened. Is that all correct,

Ivana? They're not calm by this victory. They know the Russians will come again.

So putting... are not calm by this victory. They know the rest of us will come again. So Putin needs more chaos in Europe. In Georgia, Moldova, and the Western Balkans are his

favorite spots when he can always escalate and then to use that as a bargaining chip against

the West.

We discussed multiple times Moldova in the past and Puddin has been using hybrid warding.

This time because we understand very well his tricks.

He failed.

So although you know the results advanced Moldova's integration path, and this was

truly humiliating to Putin's hybrid war, the EU is not out of the woods yet. Because Moldova

serves, as you mentioned, a very important geopolitical role between Russia and the West.

And he has been trying to show that the West is a paper tiger over there.

He has used numerous different tactics when it comes to election interference, whether

cybersecurity, Russia's interference also include the reports on

...