A so-called “Council with the People” was held in Vulcanesti on August 15, officially presented as a meeting dedicated to the special legal status of the Gagauzia autonomy. In practice, however, the gathering became a platform for two clear political demands: cancelling the elections for the People’s Assembly of Gagauzia scheduled for November 15 and supporting the convening of the third Congress of Representatives of the Gagauz People. The event was also attended by People’s Assembly Chairman Valentin Gaidarji, who addressed the participants, reports Deschide.md.
The grievances existing in the autonomy cannot simply be reduced to a political campaign. Gagauzia has been going through a prolonged period of instability: the mandate of the current People’s Assembly has expired, efforts to organize new elections had been blocked for months, Governor Evghenia Gutul has been sentenced to prison, and Comrat and Chisinau remain at odds over changes to electoral legislation and the powers of the autonomy.
The key question now is who is attempting to turn these grievances into a broader political mobilization and what objective lies behind it.
Among the main promoters of the Vulcanesti gathering are individuals known for their political connections to Evghenia Gutul and structures associated with Ilan Shor. At the same time, one of the main demands voiced in Vulcanesti – postponing the elections – would prolong the current political situation in the autonomy and extend the tenure of a leadership that should already have faced a new electoral test.
A Year Without Elections
The mandate of the current composition of the People’s Assembly expired at the beginning of 2026. Since then, the autonomy has been operating without a regional legislature elected for a new term.
People’s Assembly deputies spent months trying to agree on a formula for organizing the elections. In June, another attempt failed, prompting interim People’s Assembly Chairman Nikolai Ormanji to announce his resignation in protest.
The electoral dispute has unfolded alongside the crisis surrounding Governor Evghenia Gutul, who was sentenced to seven years in prison in a case concerning the illegal financing of the former Shor Party, which was declared unconstitutional in 2023.
The Gagauz executive leadership has nevertheless continued to publicly support Gutul.
Ilia Uzun, First Deputy Chairman of the Executive Committee and acting head of the autonomy, has defended both Gutul’s legitimacy and Ilan Shor’s political activity. Uzun previously described Shor as “an ambitious politician who wanted to solve Moldova’s problems.”
On August 13, two days before the Vulcanesti gathering, Uzun asked the People’s Assembly to remove from its agenda the issue of declaring the position of governor vacant until all legal avenues of appeal had been exhausted, even though the court ruling had already become final.
The People’s Assembly ultimately declared the position vacant. In theory, the decision opens the way for the election of a new governor. However, no date for the election has yet been set.
Against this background, an inevitable question arises: who benefits from prolonging the current state of uncertainty?
The current leadership of the autonomy remains in office in the absence of new elections, while postponing the People’s Assembly vote would further prolong this situation.
What Happened in Vulcanesti
The request to the Vulcanesti City Hall to organize the August 15 gathering was submitted by Ivan Fuer and Mihail Turcan, representatives of the public organization “Patriots of Gagauzia.”
According to the Gagauz news portal Nokta, speakers at the event included People’s Assembly Chairman Valentin Gaidarji, Dmitri Kiseev, a representative of the “Platform 111” organization, former adviser to Evghenia Gutul Mihail Vlah, and activist Ivan Bessarab.
Although the organizers claimed that approximately 200 citizens attended the rally, images published from the scene appeared to show a significantly smaller turnout, numbering several dozen people. This raises questions about the representativeness of an event presented as an expression of the will of Gagauzia’s residents.
The resolution adopted in Vulcanesti states that holding elections for the People’s Assembly on November 15, 2026, “loses its meaning” if the Parliament of Moldova does not take into account the autonomy’s proposals concerning electoral legislation.
Dmitri Kiseev went further in his speech, calling on the People’s Assembly to abandon the announced election date until the central authorities amend the legislative provisions contested by Comrat.
This position must also be viewed in the context of the broader legal dispute between the autonomy and the central authorities over electoral powers. Representatives of Gagauzia refer to the Law on the Special Legal Status of Gagauzia and the autonomy’s right to regulate its own elections. Chisinau insists on the supremacy of the Constitution and the need for regional legislation to comply with the national legal system.
The Vulcanesti meeting was not limited to the issue of the elections. Participants also supported the convening of the third Congress of Representatives of the Gagauz People and appointed delegates from Vulcanesti.
The organizers announced that similar meetings would be held in other localities across the autonomy.
Sources inside the autonomy told Deschide.MD that the initiative, initially presented as a local meeting, could develop into a political campaign across the entire region.
Shor Says He Has Withdrawn, But His People Remain
Kiseev, Vlah and Bessarab are not simply local residents who spontaneously took to the streets. They are well-known figures in the region who have acted as public voices for a radical political environment that has increasingly alienated parts of Gagauzia’s population.
The three have been described in the media as part of the political network that remained after the disappearance of the Shor Party. This characterization is not without precedent.
In February 2025, former People’s Assembly deputy Serghei Cernev publicly described one initiative to convene such a congress as a gathering of “Shor’s people.” According to Cernev, the organizers deliberately avoided having Marina Tauber or even Ilan Shor appear publicly in order to create the impression of a spontaneous mobilization of citizens.
Cernev also claimed that the initiative was backed by the People’s Assembly leadership at the time and that the resulting resolution was intended as a tool for putting pressure on Chisinau.
Claims About the Network Behind the Mobilization
A more direct accusation came from Alexandr Parinov, a former employee of security structures associated with Ilan Shor’s network and administrator of the Telegram channel “ADOR TV.”
Parinov claims that both the organization of the “Council with the People” in Vulcanesti and the initiative to convene the third Congress are being actively promoted by media financed by the Shor group.
He also alleges that the organizations involved in the current mobilization have links to people allegedly directed remotely by Marina Tauber.
Deschide.MD previously published a report claiming that Tauber had come under the attention of Russia’s Federal Security Service, or FSB, in connection with alleged large-scale embezzlement of funds allocated by the Kremlin for influence operations in Moldova.
Deschide also reported on an alleged FSB document claiming that Marina Tauber and other leaders of the Shor group had stolen millions of dollars provided by Moscow for the party’s activists.
Sources described as being inside the network claim that Tauber now needs a political success to improve her public image and avoid punishment.
There are also claims that the two public organizations, “Platform 111” and “Patriots of Gagauzia,” were created and are being controlled behind the scenes by Maria Albot, another person described as being close to Ilan Shor.
According to these claims, public figures such as Gaidarji, Kiseev and Vlah would serve as the public face of a campaign allegedly coordinated from Moscow.
These allegations, taken individually, do not prove that the August 15 gathering was directly ordered by Shor or Tauber. However, they coincide with several other verifiable elements: the participation of people close to Evghenia Gutul’s leadership, the promotion of an agenda favorable to postponing the elections, and the revival of an idea for a congress that has previously been associated with representatives of the former Shor Party.
Taken together, these elements at least raise the question of whether a mobilization presented as a civic initiative may in fact be supported by a much more organized political infrastructure.
Anti-Shor Resistance Inside Gagauzia
The Vulcanesti gathering is not unanimously viewed inside the People’s Assembly as an expression of the will of Gagauzia’s residents.
At a People’s Assembly meeting on August 17, Socialist deputy Leonid Chiosea said that none of the deputies from Vulcanesti district had been invited to the “Council with the People,” contrary to claims made by the organizers.
Chiosea strongly criticized those presenting themselves as “patriots” of Gagauzia and distinguished them from residents who, in his view, genuinely defend the interests of the autonomy.
His statements demonstrate that the dispute cannot simply be reduced to a “Gagauzia versus Chisinau” narrative. There are significant disagreements within the autonomy itself over how its powers should be defended and, more importantly, who has the legitimacy to speak on behalf of its residents.
What Comes Next
The conflict between Chisinau and Comrat is real. So are the grievances held by part of Gagauzia’s population over relations with the central authorities, changes to electoral legislation and the future of the autonomy.
Those problems do not disappear simply because individuals politically associated with Ilan Shor become involved in them.
But the existence of genuine grievances makes it all the more important to ask who is attempting to exploit them.
Mobilizing a regional autonomy through a series of “people’s assemblies” that gradually develop into a coordinated protest movement and put demands on the central authorities is a political model that has appeared repeatedly across the post-Soviet space. The precedents of North Ossetia, Crimea and Donbas provide genuine reasons for concern.
This does not mean that Gagauzia will automatically follow the same path.
It does mean, however, that the model itself – using genuine grievances among the population of a region, usually one with a predominantly Russian-speaking population, to build a political lever for pressuring the state – is sufficiently universal and sufficiently risky for both Chisinau and Moldovan society to treat it with the utmost seriousness.
Gagauzia currently has a legislature whose mandate has expired, the position of governor has been declared vacant, and no date has yet been set for the election of a new head of the autonomy. This represents a genuine political vacuum, and the main beneficiaries of delaying a new electoral reset are inevitably those who already hold the levers of power in the autonomy.
For this reason, the debate over Gagauzia should be reduced neither to accusations coming from Chisinau nor to the rhetoric of those claiming to speak on behalf of the entire autonomy.
The key question should be addressed to the organizers of the Vulcanesti gathering and those supporting the postponement of the elections: if the current leadership truly represents the will of Gagauzia’s residents, why should the moment when those residents are called to the polls again be postponed?