The pro-Western president of Moldova, Maia Sandu, won re-election on Sunday in a high-stakes runoff vote in the former Soviet republic against a rival candidate she had denounced as “Moscow’s man.”
The vote — held a week after a contested election in Georgia, another former Soviet territory, handed victory to the Moscow-leaning governing party — has been closely watched by the United States, the European Union and Russia as a critical test of Moldova’s direction.
Because it’s western europe vs eastern europe
Yeah, but those Eastern European countries aren’t physically moving westward. They’re just trying to institute democracy.
It’s not moving country it’s political alignment, it’s a battle between pro western europe(EU) party vs pro eastern europe(russia) party, democracy is how they fight.
Western Europe does not have a monopoly on democracy and did not invent it, nor is Eastern Europe destined to restart 300 more years of Russian empire. Human rights and political progress does not care about geography.
Western countries like Spain and Germany were dictatorships for the majority of the 20th century and countries like Poland and Finland were democratic republics for large parts of the 20th century.
I think it’s closed-minded to think of democracy as a western thing, and Russian imperialism as an Eastern thing, and it contributes to the political divide between the EU and its neighbors RU, BY, UA, MD, and GE.
I…i didn’t even say democracy is a western thing, what are you on about?
Edit: you might be mistakenly replied to my comment i think
You said that western europe is pro democracy and eastern europe is pro Russia, which is an idea that I thought missed out on the historical context.
No i said pro western europe/EU vs pro eastern europe/russia. There’s no democracy in my word, none, nada.
No, Moldova wants to install legs. Or at least treads.
Eastern Europe just means formerly Russian, It does not have a geographic or cultural meaning.
My Eastern European country is not formerly Russian.
I mean that the term refers to regions that were formerly USSR/Warsaw Pact/communist for up to 50-80 years in the 20th century. What does Estonia have in common with Slovenia? What does Poland have in common with Georgia? The Baltics, Central Europe, Balkans, Caucuses, Black Sea, Karelia, Dnieper/Kiev region, Volga/Moscow region, and the Urals are all distinct regions with distinct history and culture that shouldn’t be lumped together as “Eastern Europe”
Western Europe has commonalities like germanic/romance languages, feudalism, lasting French/German/British empires, and the origins of the EU, which can’t be said for Eastern. It may even be more accurate to describe Western Europe as Scandinavian, West Germanic, French, Mediterranean, and British Islands. Either way, dividing Europe into an arbitrary East/West is just chauvinist neo-colonialism by Western Europe, where the countries of the EU project are treating the eastern frontier as a poorer, less developed “other”. The EU project is meant to unite all Europeans as equals in democracy, and alienating former communist countries undermines that.
Video essay on the subject:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVXgqZIsViI