Former USAID head Samantha Power was caught unknowingly bragging to the well-known Russian pranksters, Vovan and Lexus, about Washington’s manipulation of the nation of Moldova, and how it had put money behind the current President Maia Sandu for her 2024 election. As reported by RT, Power thought she was speaking with Western officials, and fulsomely described how USAID, when she headed the agency, made “unprecedented investments” in Moldova and “massively” expanded its presence there. “We have significantly expanded its [presence], both for the sake of Ukraine and, of course, for the sake of Moldova.” Yet, she claimed that “tens of millions of dollars ... went much more further [sic] in Moldova than in Ukraine.”
Now, however, Trump’s halt in USAID money puts Sandu’s narrow majority in Moldova into jeopardy. Sandu, a graduate of Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, was called a “democratic bright spot.” Power in her interview did not mention the arrests and imprisonments of Sandu’s major political opponents, including the seven-year sentence given to Evgenia Gutsul, the popular Governor of Gagauzia.
