DIVIDE AND CONQUER: Moldova and Bulgaria are the latest victories in a series of electoral gains for groups that support Putin’s attempts to splinter Europe and weaken NATO.
MIKHAIL KLIMENTYEV/SPUTNIK/AP
FALLING DOMINOES: That’s what U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower called countries coming under Communist control in the 1950s, while warning that aggressive Soviet expansion would cause the “disintegration” of the free world. Over the next four decades, thousands died in proxy wars from Vietnam to Afghanistan, as the United States and its allies fought to contain the global influence of Moscow.
In November, dominoes began falling once again in a new contest between Europe, which is struggling to maintain its unity, and a recently assertive Russia. In the EU member state of Bulgaria, Rumen Radev—a pro-Russian former air force general with no political experience—beat a candidate from the center-right political establishment in the country’s presidential elections. On the same day in Moldova, once part of the USSR, a pro-Moscow political outsider, Igor Dodon, won the presidency, defeating a pro-Western former World Bank economist.