Nicolae Fratea is on a mission to purge his Facebook timeline of weird political adverts. Every couple of days, he’s presented with accounts that, on the surface, look innocent—they often share the same innocuous profile picture of a cathedral in Chisinau, Moldova. But when he scrolls past, these pages present him with what he describes as “soft propaganda,” trying to entice him to join anti-government protests.
The ads echo the political messages of Ilan Shor, a sanctioned politician and businessman with deep links to the Kremlin, who has been accused by the US government of trying to destabilize Moldova on behalf of Russia. On Sunday, these ads helped promote Moldova’s most
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