Feb. 28, 2026, 6:47 p.m.
(PHOTO: Ziarul de Gardă)
Despite its modest size, Moldova remains a country with a rich and extremely polarized media landscape. Sharing not only the border and the Black Sea basin with Ukraine, this country also shares with us energy risks, which media outlets are forced to cover in the news. However, the question is whether Moldova shares Ukraine's position on the coverage of Russian aggression.
In December 2022, Moldova's Emergency Situations Commission suspended the licenses of six pro-Russian TV channels that had been broadcasting Kremlin narratives. However, pro-Russian messengers have not disappeared, but have taken root on other platforms and are now more common on various social networks such as Telegram, Facebook, and the Russian Vkontakte and Odnoklassniki. This is not surprising, as it is much easier to spread manipulation under the guise of "efficiency" and "convenience" on these social networks due to the lack of strict regulation of the platforms. Therefore, the pro-Russian media have not learned this lesson of journalism without propaganda at all and continue to make mistakes.
A series of power outages in late January and early February 2026 became a kind of crash test for the media. The main marker of the quality of journalism was a simple question: whether the authors mentioned that the root of the problem lies in the destruction of Ukraine's energy system by Russia.
For the flagships of independent journalism, such as Agor and Ziarul de Gardă (ZdG), the connection between the war in Ukraine and the blackout in Chisinau apartments is an axiom that needs to be explained, not hidden. Covering the large-scale outage on January 31, 2026, Agora immediately published an explanation from officials.
IMAGE: agora.md (text translated automatically)
In its materials, the publication quotes the Minister of Energy, who notes that the system was triggered automatically due to a drop in the frequency in the network. The reason is clearly stated - it is a critical situation in Ukraine's power grids, as evidenced by subsequent reports on the restoration of domestic generation. The journalists do not limit themselves to stating the fact that there is no electricity, but clearly explain the cause and effect relationship to their readers.
IMAGE: agora.md (text translated automatically)
Ziarul de Gardă went even further, realizing that blackouts are ideal grounds for panic and propaganda. They published fact-checking stories, refuting Russian narratives that neighboring Romania had allegedly refused to help.
IMAGE: Ziarul de Gardă (text translated automatically)
In its editorials, ZdG emphasizes that the power is going out not because of the incompetence of the authorities, but because of the actions of the aggressor, who is destroying the critical infrastructure of the neighboring state. Importantly, these media outlets distinguish between military blackouts and the weather-related blackouts that occurred in early February. When thousands of customers were left without power due to ice, independent media honestly reported on the weather conditions, not mixing it with politics, but keeping their finger on the pulse of the restoration work.
IMAGE: Ziarul de Gardă (text translated automatically)
Another important role is played by Newsmaker, which works mainly for the Russian-speaking audience and serves as a bridge of adequacy. Analyzing their feed, it becomes obvious that they systematically cover the root cause - Russian attacks. Newsmaker's headlines about blackouts in Ukrainian regions due to attacks or night strikes on Odesa create a complete picture for the reader. When a reader of this resource sees the news that the power went out in Chisinau, they already know the context: the day before, Russian drones or missiles hit substations in Ukraine. Importantly, the publication refers to official sources, such as the State Emergency Service or media outlets such as Radio Liberty or Suspilne, which are on the White List of Media according to the Institute of Mass Information.
A completely different picture is observed in the segment of Telegram channels, which have become a safe haven for propaganda and manipulation. The most illustrative examples of low-quality news and disinformation are the activities of Sputnik Moldova and Moldavskie Vedomosti.
IMAGE: Sputnik Moldova
In its reports on the blackouts, Sputnik Moldova focuses exclusively on the chaos: trolleybuses stopped, darkness in the streets, and panic. There is no mention of the Russian missile attacks on Ukraine's energy infrastructure. However, they do not forget to reprint Maria Zakharova's posts about the EU ambassador sleeping in the bathroom because of Russian shelling. This creates the illusion that the energy crisis is exclusively Moldova's internal problem.
IMAGE: Sputnik Moldova
These outlets use the tactic of toxic efficiency, being the first to report the problem, but deliberately ignoring its cause. That is why, among the news about Pushkin and another church scandal, one can find something about Ukraine. The Sputnik Moldova channel, which is a direct conduit for the Kremlin's narratives, could not survive the blocking order from the Intelligence and Security Service, so it successfully writes its "truth" on Telegram.
The Vedomosti Moldova channel, which positions itself as a news aggregator, operates in a similar way. It publishes short, dry facts about the shutdown without explaining the reasons or context. Such a presentation legitimizes the population's discontent, because when the media writes about power outages but is silent about the war, the average citizen perceives it as arbitrariness of local electricians.
IMAGE: Vedomosti Moldova
However, if you look at the Facebook page of Vedomosti Moldova, you can already meet the administrator Elena Zamura, who is happy to comment on the critical situation with the energy sector in Ukraine and why drones are occasionally flying over Moldova.
IMAGE: Vedomosti Moldova / Facebook
IMAGE: Elena Zamura / Facebook
Traditional pro-Russian outlets such as Komsomolskaya Pravda and some regional outlets are less aggressive than anonymous Telegram channels, but they also distort reality. Instead of explaining energy interdependence, the emphasis shifts to the threat from Ukraine. The news is often presented in the format of danger messages from Ukrainian drones, which creates the message that Ukraine is the source of danger, not the victim of Russian aggression. The logical chain here is deliberately broken, and the responsibility is being shifted to Kyiv or Chisinau.
The energy crisis of early 2026 was not just a technical challenge, but a real litmus test for the Moldovan media, which finally distinguished between factual journalism and manipulation. In this situation, high-quality independent media outlets such as Agora and ZdG serve as social fuses. That is, they reduce the degree of social tension only by adhering to journalistic standards. By explaining that the darkness in Moldovan homes is a direct consequence of the war in Ukraine, these outlets transform the blind anger of consumers into the conscious position of a citizen who understands the price of freedom and the essence of energy interdependence.
Meanwhile, disinformation Telegram resources with pro-Russian narratives cynically use blackouts as an information weapon of mass destruction. Their goal is not to promptly inform the public about the schedules for restoring electricity supply, but to create an atmosphere of hopelessness and chaos, as aggression and panic are more easily manipulated. By deliberately withholding information about Russian aggression, they are trying to direct social discontent against the governments of Moldova and Ukraine, undermining confidence in Chisinau's European course and destroying solidarity with Kyiv, in effect hinting that energy comfort is possible only at the cost of giving up sovereignty and changing the geopolitical vector.
Therefore, we can now clearly say that the Russian-Ukrainian war is not somewhere else, it affects many countries on the media battlefield in one way or another. Moldova was one of the first countries to support Ukraine and continues to strongly resist Russian propaganda.
Анастасія Ракоїд, Олег Колеснік
Feb. 25, 2026
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