Russia Accuses Maia Sandu of Nazism, Echoing Ukraine Narrative

The spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, likened the policies of Moldova’s President, Maia Sandu, to Third Reich experiments concerning nationality and language. This comparison echoes propaganda narratives used during the 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

“As for Sandu, you know, I think it’s comparable to the experiments of the Third Reich. Only then and there did they experiment with people’s nationality, with their language,” said Zakharova.

The Russian MFA spokeswoman recalled that documentary literature and history describe “how the Third Reich forced newspaper workers to use a different font.”

“The font of the newspapers had to correspond precisely to this idea of Aryans – pure-blood Aryans, what they invented there: the shape of the nose, the ears, the shape of the skull, the forehead, the location of the eyes and so on. A clear categorization of people. Of course, eugenics, which then gained momentum”, Zakharova emphasized.

Drawing a parallel with the politics of the Third Reich, the spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry escalated and pointed out that, similarly, Maia Sandu “rewrote people literally, without asking them, again after a template – she placed and circled the features that were needed, the rest were cut, painted and thrown away”.

According to TASS, Maia Sandu approved a parliamentary decision on changing the name of the state language from Moldovan to Romanian, in 2023.

“In a second, the Moldovan language, with a stroke of the Sandu government’s pen, turned into the Romanian language. And what is this but elements of genocide against an entire people?”, Russian MFA spokeswoman commented.

Zakharova also claims that the first question she asks when she meets Moldovan citizens is about the language they speak: “Tell me, what language do you speak?”. “They answer: of course, in the Moldovan language. From a historical point of view, the Moldovan language is older than the Romanian language,” she said.

Maia Sandu is, according to Maria Zakharova, “a transmitter of the same Nazi ideas, ideologies, philosophical visions, which are paid for by the West”. “I think this is comparable either to the policy of the Third Reich or to the way the colonizers left Africa, drawing the borders of countries with just a ruler on the map, making people suffer, that is, deliberately condemning people to future bloody conflicts, having such an opportunity at that time“, concluded Zakharova.

Russia also accused Maia Sandu of national treason, because the Moldovan authorities paid tribute to the Romanian soldiers who liberated Bessarabia from the Red Army.

 “At the same time, the country continues to glorify the Romanian soldiers who fought on the side of Hitler’s Germany.On April 20 at the former Russian garrison cemetery in Chisinau – think about it – the Mausoleum of the Romanian Army was opened, in honor of the more than 100 Romanian heroes who died for the liberation of Chisinau in 1941. That qualifies not only as a crime against historical memory or as the rewriting of the history of one’s own people, but also as a national betrayal”, spokesperson of the Russian MFA also claimed.