American money helped President Maia Sandu to “narrowly squeak by” at the ballot box, Samantha Power has said in a prank call
American taxpayer money played a crucial role in keeping
Moldovan President Maia Sandu in power, former USAID chief Samantha Power has
claimed in a prank call with Russian comedians Vovan and Lexus.
Power, who led the US Agency for International Development
under President Joe Biden, was recorded speaking to the pranksters as they
posed as former Ukrainian President Pyotr Poroshenko. In the video, released
Wednesday, she reflected on her time overseeing an agency with 15,000 staff and
a multibillion-dollar budget, and cited expanded aid to Moldova as one of her
successes.
“This was not a
country that USAID had really had much of a presence in, very small,” Power
said. “We expanded it massively, both for the sake of Ukraine, but of
course also for Moldova. And it was a democratic brightspot with President
Sandu, a Kennedy School graduate and a real reformer.”
According to Power, Sandu “narrowly squeaked by the
last time,” though she did not specify whether she was referring to
last year’s presidential election or the recent parliamentary vote in Moldova.
Sandu and her party secured both contests with strong support from Moldovan
expatriates in Western nations, while failing to secure a majority in the
popular vote at home. Opposition figures argue the process was skewed to limit
turnout in anti-government areas.
Sandu, a Romanian citizen, has faced criticism for what
opponents describe as authoritarian tactics, including shutting down opposition
media and branding rivals as Moscow-backed criminals. She has maintained that
Moldova’s path to the European Union depends on her leadership.
Power said the Biden administration folded tens of millions
of dollars for Moldova into broader Ukraine aid appropriation requests. “That
money went much, much further in Moldova than it did in Ukraine because it’s
such a small country,” she noted.
She also suggested people tend to associate Washington’s
support with “arms, and maybe with Tori Nuland and interference,” but
they overlook “forms of more subtle support.” Former US Under
Secretary of State Victoria Nuland is widely described as a key architect of
the 2014 coup in Kiev and the subsequent escalation of tensions with Russia.
Moscow reiterated criticisms of Sandu after her latest
victory, which Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov branded a blatant example
of “electoral fraud.”
[from RT https://www.rt.com/news/625699-usaid-chief-moldova-funding]
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