STRATCOM — Moldova's State Centre Tracks AI-Driven Disinformation Networks Ahead of Its Elections

The Centre for Strategic Communication and Countering Disinformation (STRATCOM) was created by a law passed by Moldova's Parliament in July 2023 at President Maia Sandu's initiative. Oversight moved from Parliament to the Presidency in August 2025, and a presidential decree of 16 September 2025 fixed its structure at up to 29 staff, organised around a Situational Awareness and Forecasting Directorate that monitors inauthentic online behaviour, and a Resilience Building directorate.

Its report covering May–September 2025 documented the "Pravda Network": at least 129 websites publishing in more than 50 languages and generating roughly 500,000 impressions a day, using AI-generated articles, deepfakes and inauthentic social accounts to undermine trust in Moldovan institutions around the October 2024 presidential election and EU-accession referendum and the 2025 parliamentary election.

STRATCOM works alongside EU-backed monitoring — the European Commission ran a joint "stress test" of digital hybrid-threat scenarios with Moldovan authorities — and NGO-run AI monitoring such as International Media Support's LetsData algorithm. Its own detection methodology is not fully public, and its move between parliamentary and presidential oversight within two years signals an institution still settling its governance model.

Read the full analysis: https://stratcom.md/