Pro-Russia activists pay people to protest

Starved of natural gas from Russia and electricity from Ukraine's missile-battered power grid, Moldova has been so unsettled by skyrocketing utility bills and occasional blackouts that, according to the mayor of a small city in the north, residents can barely contain their anger.

“They stop me on the street and ask: ‘When can we go to another protest?' ” Orhei Mayor Pavel Verejanu told the New York Times, describing what he called public fury at the proWestern central government and its failure to secure a deal with Russia for a steady supply of cheap energy.

But there is another reason people are so eager to protest: They are paid to join the noisy weekly rallies that have been held since September in the capital, Chisinau, calling for the removal of Moldova's president, Maia Sandu, a former World Bank official pushing Europe's poorest country out of Moscow's orbit.

The paid protests against the president and her Westward tilt are organized by the mayor's political party, a vociferously pro-Russian force led by his predecessor, Ilan M. Shor, a convicted fraudster and fugitive who, officials say, is working to turn an energy crisis into a political crisis that threatens the government.

Anger at high energy prices has been bubbling across Europe for months, offering Moscow what it sees as its best hope of eroding public support for Ukraine and pressuring Western governments to back away from their condemnations of Russia's invasion.

Russia-friendly activists on the far left and far right have helped mobilize protests over high energy prices in the Czech Republic, Germany and other European countries. But those demonstrations have been less frequent and far less well funded than the weekly rallies and often daily flash mob protests in Moldova, a country that is particularly vulnerable because of its long-standing political, economic and linguistic cleavages.

Russia has not only created public discontent in Moldova through a squeeze on energy supplies, but working through local allies like Shor, has also pushed this discontent onto the streets, trying to unseat the pro-Western government.