Gagauzia

Opposition parties critical of President Maia Sandu's pro-European stance have joined forces in Moscow, forming a pre-election bloc with ambitions to contest upcoming presidential elections and a pivotal referendum on EU membership.

The new governor of the pro-Russian autonomous region of Gagauzia, Evghenia Gutul, publicly thanked her supporters on Tuesday after the Court of Appeal in the region's main city Comrat decided the previous evening to validate the results of the May 14 elections for the position of bashkan (governor).

Officers of Moldova's National Anticorruption Centre, CNA, on Tuesday evening raided the offices of the Central Electoral Commission in Gagauzia, collecting lists of voters for the election of a new governor held in the autonomous southern region.

The CNA said it found names in the lists of some citizens settled outside the country and of some dead people.

Evghenia Gutul's victory in the race for governor of autonomous Gagauzia has been dogged by allegations of irregularities. If confirmed, her pro-Russian party, bankrolled by a fugitive oligarch, will have a seat in Moldova's pro-European cabinet.

Local elections in Moldova's pro-Russian autonomous region of Gagauzia were won on Sunday by the Ilan Shor Party's candidate, Evghenia Gutul, according to results published by the Electoral Commission in Comrat, the central administrative city in the region.

Moldovan anti-corruption prosecutors on Sunday raided the offices of the pro-Russian Ilan Shor Party in the southern autonomous region of Gagauzia, suspecting they have used illegal means to solicit votes for the party's candidate, Evghenia Gutul, in elections for the post of governor.

Moldova's autonomous region of Gagauzia goes to elections on Sunday for a new governor, or Bashkan, with eight candidates in the race, most of them with pro-Russian views.

The elections in Gagauzia represent a first test before local elections throughout the country due in autumn, and for presidential elections that will take place next year.

Andrian Cheptonar, an MP from Moldova's governing Action and Solidarity, PAS party welcomed on Tuesday a decision to bar entry to a Russian delegation led by the head of the Russian republic of Tatarstan, Rustam Minnihanov, on the grounds that it intended to interfere in the country's internal affairs.

The Gagauz are a small Christian Turkic minority that lives primarily in southern Moldova and Ukraine's Odessa region. According to the 1989 Soviet census, over 153,000 Gagauz lived in Moldova, concentrated mainly in the cities of Comrat and Ceadîr-Lunga, and with a considerable minority in the nearby regions of Vulcănești, Taraclia, and Basarabeasca.

Moldova's pro-Western President Maia Sandu said on Wednesday that she does not understand why Russia imposed a new embargo on Moldovan fruits on August 15, as her country's goods meet EU quality standards that are higher than Russian standards.