Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has transformed Moldova from a peripheral EU “neighbourhood” country into a frontline state. Russian drones targeting Ukraine now cross Moldovan airspace almost nightly. On the night of October 15–16 alone, Moldova’s Defence Ministry recorded four incursions, and Moldovan authorities have counted eight airspace violations in a single week, GMF reports.
The pressure is not purely military. Moscow has used energy as a weapon, most notably when Gazprom cut supplies to Transnistria in January 2025, leaving Chișinău to manage the fallout. Hybrid electoral interference, from vote-buying networks to coordinated disinformation, cast a shadow over both the 2024 EU referendum and the 2025 parliamentary elections. Around 1,500 Russian troops remain stationed in Transnistria, roughly 100 kilometres from Odesa.
Moldova’s EU accession process will help determine whether Moscow’s pressure on the country succeeds. It could consolidate Moldova’s place in Europe and make it a stable anchor on Ukraine’s southwestern flank. Alternatively, it could become a slow, costly, and politically contested process that gives Russia an opportunity to turn Moldova into a source of leverage over Ukraine and test the limits of EU enlargement as a security instrument.
Membership as a Security Option
Moldova’s constitution enshrines permanent neutrality, and NATO membership is not on the table. This leaves the EU as the only major Western bloc with a security dimension that Chișinău can realistically join. As a result, Moldova increasingly views EU membership not only as a governance and economic project but also as its main strategic security option.
EU institutions and member states now echo this logic. Chișinău and Brussels both speak of a unique window of opportunity in which enlargement has once again become a strategic investment in Europe’s stability and security. The European Commission goes further, recognising that Moldova is already contributing to European security, not only in the military sphere but also through energy security and efforts to counter foreign interference.
In practice, the EU has become one of Moldova’s most important external supporters in security and defence, even though this assistance falls short of a formal defence guarantee. In July, the Council adopted a €120 million European Peace Facility (EPF) measure to finance a medium-range air defence system, bringing total EPF support for Moldova to €317 million. That single measure exceeds Moldova’s entire annual defence budget, which official figures put at nearly 2 billion lei, or roughly €100 million, this year.
Chișinău is doing its part. Defence spending has more than doubled since 2022, and the military strategy for 2025–2035 targets defence spending of 1% of GDP by 2034. Even so, Moldova will depend on partners for years to come for the capabilities that matter most in countering drones and missiles.
Momentum and Its Limits
The EU accession process itself could push Moldova in either direction. The momentum is real. On October 13, 2026, the EU opened two clusters, or thematic groups of negotiating chapters, in its accession negotiations with Moldova. These new clusters cover the internal market, and competitiveness and inclusive growth. This came after Hungary lifted a veto aimed at Ukraine that had also held back Moldova, as the EU has advanced the two candidate countries as a package. The move brought the number of chapters open for negotiation to 24 out of 33. The government aims to complete technical talks by 2028 and join the EU by 2030, a timeline Brussels considers achievable.
But the remaining distance is the hardest. The clusters that remain unopened, covering the green agenda and agriculture and cohesion, carry the heaviest adjustment costs for Moldova’s farmers and small businesses. Every reform creates losers whom Russian-backed actors are eager to recruit, as the 2025 elections and the current campaign in Gagauzia demonstrate.
Moldova’s accession also depends on unanimity among the EU’s 27 member states. The relief of October 13 proved short-lived. A week later, Budapest blocked the procedural step needed to open the two remaining clusters for both candidate countries, again without explanation. EU officials still expect those clusters to open in December, but the episode confirms that a dispute between one capital and one candidate country in a pair can freeze the process for the other as well. A process that stalls, or appears to reward geopolitics over merit, would erode the narrow pro-European majority that carried the 2024 referendum with just over 50%.
Discussions with Moldovan officials during a recent visit showed how policymakers now frame the stakes. They increasingly link accession to Ukraine’s security. In their view, a Moldova anchored in the EU would narrow Russia’s options for using Transnistria and the country’s south to pressure Odesa and Ukraine’s access to the sea. Membership would not, by itself, remove Russian troops, restore Chișinău’s control over Transnistria, or end sabotage and coercion directed at Odesa. But it would deny Moscow a weak and contested flank from which to exert that pressure.
Officials also link accession to the future of the Black Sea region, where Moldova, Romania, and Ukraine increasingly form a single strategic space along the Danube and the Odesa corridor. Above all, they see Moldova as a test of the EU’s credibility as a geopolitical actor. If Brussels cannot bring in a small, reform-minded candidate, its promises to larger and more complicated candidates will ring hollow.
A Test Case for Enlargement as Security Policy
Moldova is becoming a key test of whether EU enlargement can function as security policy. Cyprus joined the EU in 2004 with an unresolved territorial conflict, but in a very different context. If a small, committed candidate with a frozen conflict and Russian troops on its territory can be integrated on a credible timeline while a war rages next door, this would offer important lessons for Ukraine. It would demonstrate that an unresolved conflict need not be a permanent barrier to membership and that the EU can protect as well as reform.
To make that case credible, the EU should link its security support more closely to the accession process rather than run the two in parallel. EPF assistance, the 2024 Security and Defence Partnership, and membership negotiations are still managed by different institutions on different timelines. The negotiating chapter on foreign, security, and defence policy, opened in July 2026 as part of the external relations cluster, offers a natural vehicle. Incorporating concrete benchmarks on defence reform, interoperability, and resilience into that chapter and the accession roadmap being prepared by the Commission would show Moldovans that the accession process is already delivering tangible security gains. The EU’s mutual assistance clause will apply only once Moldova becomes a member, making visible protection along the way all the more important.
If the process stalls, Moscow gains a narrative of European indifference and a foothold on Europe’s eastern flank at minimal cost. The window that European leaders keep describing is open now. The cheapest moment to secure Moldova is while it remains so.
This brief draws on discussions held at the Moldova Security Forum, which took place in Chișinău on October 8–9, 2026. GMF co-organised the forum and hosted a dedicated panel titled “Inside Russia’s Playbook: How Regime Survival Drives Operations Abroad”. It also co-organised a high-level study visit to Moldova with ECFR on October 7–9. The visit received local support from the Platform for Security and Defence Initiatives. The delegation met with the prime minister, the president, and other key ministers.
The views expressed herein are solely those of the author(s). GMF, as an institution, does not take positions.