Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze and other members of the ruling Georgian Dream party have lashed out at Moldovan President Maia Sandu following her statement on Monday that she would support the unification of Moldova with Romania if it were put to a referendum.
‘Look at what’s happening around Moldova today. Look at what’s happening in the world’, Sandu said on the UK podcast The Rest is Politics.
‘It is getting more and more difficult for a small country like Moldova to survive as a democracy, as a sovereign country, and of course to resist Russia’.
Sandu nonetheless acknowledged that there was unlikely to be sufficient support among Moldovans for such a move, and that Moldova joining the EU on its own was a ‘more realistic objective’.
Moldova has at many times in history been united with Romania, including as recently as 1940, before the Soviet Union annexed what is now modern-day Moldova. The two countries also share a common language.
In response, Kobakhidze said the statement was ‘astonishing’ and a ‘very sad development’.
‘A country’s political leader declares that she is ready to vote in favour of the loss of the country’s independence. When such a statement is made by a political leader, I don’t even know what comment can be made about it’.
Kobakhidze added that the shared Soviet history of Georgia and Moldova made the comments hit closer to home.
‘Naturally, this is a very sad development for Moldova, for a country that gained independence together with us in the early 1990s. The rest is Moldova’s own affair — they will probably sort out their own issues themselves’.
Similar comments were made by Georgia’s Parliamentary Speaker Shalva Papuashvili, who suggested that Moldova was taking a path to the EU ‘through the loss of sovereignty’.
‘For us, however, the issue is simple: Georgia’s European path is the path of an independent state, not its abolition’, Papuashvili added.
It is not the first time that Kobakhidze and other Georgian Dream officials have criticised Sandu, who has also hit back at times.
Following the victory of Sandu’s party in the Moldovan parliamentary elections in September 2025, Kobakhidze said it would be ‘difficult’ to congratulate her, citing Moldova’s membership in the Russian-led Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS).
The CIS is a regional organisation consisting of nine successor states of the former Soviet Union — Georgia was previously a member, but withdrew following the 2008 August War. While formally still a member, Moldova has said it would withdraw from the organisation in the aftermath of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Kobakhidze’s citing of Moldova’s CIS membership as a reason to refuse to congratulate Sandu were mocked and seen as a smokescreen by some on social media, obfuscating the unwillingness of Georgian Dream to publicly support Moldova’s pro-EU government. Georgian Dream has repeatedly complained that the EU has a hypocritical approach towards Moldova, unfairly focusing on problems in Georgia while ignoring similar issues there.
Membership in the CIS has previously not prevented Kobakhidze from congratulating other foreign leaders on electoral victories — in 2024, he congratulated Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev for being reelected to a fifth term in a vote that was widely seen as neither free nor fair.
Ahead of the Moldovan elections, a crew from the Georgian pro-government media outlet Imedi was denied entry into the country. While documents shared of the refusal indicated simply relevant legislation that concerns the registration of foreigners in the country, Imedi journalists claimed the reasons were political.
In 2024, Moldova summoned Georgia’s chargé d’affaires after Kobakhidze claimed there were ‘gross flaws’ in the Moldovan presidential election that had just been held.
Mikheil Gvadzabia
