When Moldovan President Maia Sandu arrived in Helsinki, the agenda looked familiar: a visit to a friendly European capital, talks about cooperation, handshakes and brief statements. But when she sat down with Finnish television channel Yle, in a conversation later reported by Interia, she chose to talk about something that rarely appears on official itineraries—the slow, invisible war for the public’s mind. New artificial intelligence technologies, Sandu warned, are making it easier for Russia to manufacture and spread false messages that appeal directly to public fears. She described this development with the urgency of a president who has watched her own country become a laboratory for digital manipulation. The old tools of propaganda were crude: broadcasts, pamphlets, and posters that screamed so loudly that they could be easily recognized. Today’s tools are different. They are precise, personalized, and often undetectable. A neural network can clone a leader’s voice, fabricate a video, or generate a believable news article in seconds. It can compile data about a community’s anxieties—unemployment, corruption, crime, memories of conflict—and fashion a message designed to press on exactly those wounds. Sandu’s warning was that this capacity has lowered the cost of lies so greatly that even a small group of operators can generate chaos in a large democracy. No country, she insisted, should underestimate the sophistication of Russian propaganda. In Helsinki, a city that has historically balanced between East and West, the warning carried a special force. Finland has heard its share of hostile narratives, but Sandu’s point was that the new technology changes everything: audio, video, and context can all be manufactured, and the result is a world where citizens are no longer sure what is real and what is a manufactured attack.
Sandu’s language was unusually strong. She described Russian information influence as the most radical form of persecution. Persecution usually evokes images of physical violence—people being arrested, beaten, or driven from their homes. Yet for millions of citizens in Moldova, Ukraine, Georgia, and beyond, the first assault is on the mind. It comes through phones and screens, disguised as ordinary gossip, breaking news, or academic analysis. The aim is not simply to change someone’s opinion. The aim is to destroy the psychological conditions that allow a society to function at all. When citizens no longer know which facts are true and which politicians can be trusted, they begin to feel powerless. They withdraw from institutions. They stop believing in elections, courts, and newspapers. They lose the capacity to unite around a shared purpose. Sandu stressed that Russian propaganda is becoming increasingly sophisticated. It is no longer a monotonous choir singing the same Kremlin tune. It is a shape-shifting, decentralized network that adapts to every audience. It can support a far-right candidate in one country and a far-left candidate in another, because the final goal is not the victory of one ideology but the destruction of another: trust. Highly realistic deepfakes, automated bot networks, and artificial-intelligence-driven content creation allow the machine to respond to real-world events within minutes, flooding every conversation with doubt, anger, or confusion. Those who think they are immune because they read carefully are still surrounded by a poisoned information ecosystem. The word “persecution” is not hyperbole. It is a precise description of what happens when an entire people is systematically denied access to a stable, comprehensible reality. Sandu asked the audience in Finland to consider what it would be like to wake up every morning unsure whether the government is on your side, whether your neighbor shares your values, and whether the news you read is true. That is the condition Russia is trying to create.
What makes this strategy so insidious, Sandu explained, is that Russian information campaigns are not necessarily built on opposing Russia and the West. The old propaganda used to draw a bright line between the socialist world and the capitalist world, but the new version is far more cynical. It does not have to make people love Moscow. It only has to make them hate or distrust something else. The objective, she said, is to exploit the existing lines of social division in the countries Moscow seeks to influence. These divisions exist in every society. There are urban-rural divides, generational divides, ethnic and linguistic divides, religious divides, class divides, and divides between those who remember the Soviet past and those who dream of a European future. The propaganda machine treats these lines like fractures in a pane of glass: it does not need to cause the cracks, because they are already there. It only needs to press down at the right angle, at the right moment, until the glass shatters. In one context, it may amplify an environmental protest into a national crisis. In another, it may take a genuine grievance about pensions or health care and convert it into evidence that democracy cannot work. It may create fake articles that quote nonexistent European bureaucrats, or invent a scandal and then report on it as if it had been confirmed by independent sources. Because these narratives are rooted in real vulnerabilities, they sound plausible. They are not arguments; they are emotional keys that unlock pre-existing fears. Sandu’s warning was a reminder that the most dangerous lie is the one that carries a kernel of truth. The challenge for democracies is not to deny the existence of strains in society but to address them before someone else uses them for hostile purposes. A country that fails to repair its own inequalities is making itself vulnerable to exploitation. That is why Sandu’s speech in Helsinki was as much about social justice as it was about cyber security.
Nowhere are these tactics more visible than in Moldova. Sandu noted that key themes in Russian propaganda include claims about the state’s inability to protect its citizens and the incompetence of local politicians. Those messages are designed to resonate with every family that has struggled with low wages, poor infrastructure, or the absence of relatives who went abroad to earn money. Moldova has long been one of the poorest countries in Europe, and its challenges are not invented by propagandists—they are real. The deception lies in the solution it offers. The propaganda does not say that Russia will fix the problems; it simply says that Europe, the West, and Moldova’s current leadership will never fix them. It fuels anti-European sentiment, telling citizens that the European Union is a false promise, that Brussels is only interested in exploiting former Soviet states, and that the country’s traditions will be erased. Sandu, who is in her second term as president, has been the target of relentless personal attacks. She is described as a puppet of the West, a liar, a foreigner in her own country. Yet the facts of what she has signed and done appear in official records. Moldova submitted its application to join the European Union on March 3, 2022, just a few days after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The application was signed by Sandu. It was an act of extraordinary courage, because Russia’s army was already moving against a neighboring country, and Moldova’s security was far from guaranteed. Every day since then, Moldovans have lived with the war at their doorstep—with Ukrainian refugees crossing their border, with missiles flying near their airspace, and with a relentless digital assault trying to convince them that their president’s choices were wrong. The fact that Moldova remains committed to its European course, despite all this, is a story that deserves the attention of every democracy.
Sandu’s interview in Helsinki was therefore much more than a diplomatic monologue. It was a call to democratic governments to stop treating disinformation as a secondary concern. She reminded the Finnish audience that no country should underestimate the new generation of AI-powered propaganda. The response cannot be limited to one election cycle or one fact-checking organization. It has to be systemic. Democracies need to fund media literacy programs that teach citizens to ask where information comes from, who benefits from its spread, and what evidence supports it. They need to support independent journalism in countries under pressure, especially in Moldova, Ukraine, and the Western Balkans. They need to share intelligence about bot networks and influence operations, and they need to make it harder for hostile actors to buy digital ads and hide behind anonymous accounts. They also need to remember that people are not statistics. Behind every piece of viral misinformation there is a human being who is afraid, angry, or disappointed. Responding to that fear requires more than a link to a correction—it requires policies that deliver security, opportunity, and justice. Sandu’s own government has tried to walk this path, carrying out reforms in a country where expectations have been broken many times before. The EU’s decision to open accession talks with Moldova was a signal that her strategy is recognized. But the work is still fragile. A wave of carefully fabricated mistakes, a sudden energy crisis, or a series of violent events blamed on the government can undo years of trust-building. That is why Sandu’s plea to Finland and to Europe was so urgent: do not wait for the manipulation to strike you directly before taking it seriously. By then, the divisions will already be open. The moment to act is now, while there is still a common reality to defend.
Ultimately, Sandu’s words in Helsinki were about the human heart. Technology is only a multiplier. Fear, loneliness, resentment, and hope are the raw materials that disinformation uses to shape behavior. A parent who has seen prices rise and is afraid for their children may be quick to believe that the EU caused the inflation. A young person who has to leave home to find work may be convinced that no political project can ever change their future. An older person who remembers the security of the Soviet system may be vulnerable to nostalgia, even if that system also meant surveillance and stagnation. None of these people are stupid. They are human. And the only way to protect them—and ourselves—is to build societies that are strong enough to withstand the storms of lies. That means insisting on facts not because facts are always comfortable, but because they are the only basis for trust. It means teaching citizens to argue with one another in good faith, and to recognize when someone is deliberately trying to turn debate into chaos. It means having leaders who are honest about their mistakes, newspapers that do not abandon truth in the chase for clicks, and international institutions that stand behind smaller countries when they are attacked. Sandu did not pretend that Moldova has won this fight. She did not pretend that the path to the European Union is smooth. But she came to Helsinki to say that the fight is winnable if democracies refuse to turn their backs. In a world of endless algorithmic manipulation, the most radical choice is to protect the spaces where people think together, feel together, and make decisions together. That is what Sandu is asking for—not just for Moldova, but for all of us. Because if a small country on Europe’s edge can survive a campaign designed to make its citizens believe in nothing, then every democracy can look in the mirror and ask: are we doing enough to keep hold of what is true?