Pro-Russia president in Bulgaria, Moldova

Leader of Moldova’s Party of Socialists Igor Dodon won Sunday’s Moldovan runoff vote, beating his EU-leaning rival by around 5 percentage points.

Moldovans cast their votes on Sunday in an election that could install a pro-Russian candidate as president and slam the brakes on seven years of closer integration with the European Union.

Dodon says he will move to rescind a law voted by Parliament which obliges taxpayers to reimburse the $1 billion, but hasn’t called for a thorough investigation or to find those responsible for the heist. Dodon’s first visit overseas was planned to be made to Moscow. Russian Federation punished Moldova with a trade embargo on wine, fruit and vegetables after it signed a trade association deal with the European Union in 2014.

Moldova is located on the fault line separating Russian Federation from Europe.

Sandu meanwhile had urged a path towards Europe, calling for the withdrawal of thousands of Russian troops from the Russian-speaking separatist region of Transdniester, which broke away in the early 1990s after a brief civil war. “It will be independent, united and sovereign”, said Dodon, who heads the opposition Socialists’ Party after voting, predicting an easy win.

Radev also praised U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s apparent willingness to soften strained U.S. -Russia relations, according to the Times, saying that it “brings big hope for finding a peaceful resolution to the conflicts in Syria and Ukraine and avoiding further confrontation and escalation”.

She called for the resignation of authorities responsible for organising the elections.

Moldova, sandwiched between Romania and Ukraine, is the poorest country in Europe.

Since then, three successive cabinets have changed, and one former Prime Minister has been arrested and accused of corruption and of accepting a bribe related to the bank fraud.

Protests against the election result started in the capital, Chisinau, on November 14, with hundreds of people waving Moldovan and European Union flags.

Bucharest-based political analyst Sorin Ionita said Maia Sandu’s did well in hard circumstances.

“Hundreds of people were not able to vote”. Since 2000, Moldova’s president had been elected for a four-year term by a majority of 60% of the MPs in the 101-seat parliament. They were previously selected by lawmakers in a process that consistently led to deadlock in the country’s fractious governments. More than 4,000 Moldovan and worldwide observers were on hand to monitor the vote.

Moldova declared independence in 1991 after the fall of the Soviet Union.