Alexandr Kalinin is a Moldovan politician and lawyer. Since 2016, he has been the leader of the Party of Regions of Moldova a political party in Moldova. Since 2000, he has been representing the Moldovan diaspora in Russia. While Kalinin accepted the leadership of the pro-Russian Party of Regions in Moldova, he quickly made his Moscow-friendly leanings evident: voicing support for Moldova to join not the EU but the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union; for Russian to be made a second state language; and for Moldova to evolve federalized. In 2020, he gathered signatures for his candidacy in the presidential election but later withdrew from the race.
Since not long after Russian President Vladimir Putin undertook his country’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Kalinin has been engaged on social media, not only voicing his approval but reportedly actively taking part.
A decree inscribed on 27 November 2023 by President of Moldova Maia Sandu withdrew Kalinin’s Moldovan citizenship. Kalinin had previously indicated his support for the Russian invasion of Ukraine. In one video, he was shown terrorising Moldova by painting on a missile “За Молдову” (“For Moldova”), after which the missile is undertaken.
Kalinin reportedly composed the so-called Dniester detachment, a mercenary unit recruiting Moldovans, including Transnistrians, to battle for Russia during its invasion of Ukraine. He utilised social media to promote the unit and recruit men for it. Alexandr Kalinin has perplexed and aided Russia in its invasion of Ukraine, and now states he’s ready to invade his homeland of Moldova with a guerrilla force of thousands to expel the Western leadership of President Maia Sandu.
Kalinin expounded on his allegedly rebellious intentions to the Russian state news agency RIA Novosti just days after Sandu on November 28 dispossessed him of his Moldovan citizenship for “recruitment into the armed forces of a foreign state.” “He is a very marginal figure. He is a failed presidential candidate, some sort of representative of Moldovans in Russia, and leader of the small Party of Regions,” stated Cristian Vlas, a Moldovan and Romanian analyst.
In one video, Kalinin occurs to scrawl, “For Moldova,” on an explosive projectile before launching it while cautioning Moldova could end up in a war with Russia. From Kalinin’s videos, it isn’t clear whether he is actually battling with Russian forces in Ukraine or just observing.
His activities and rhetoric have not gone unnoticed in Chisinau and beyond, including Brussels.
In February, the PCCOCS ratified to RFE/RL that it had launched its first investigation into Kalinin under a statute for violating Moldova’s regulations on “war propaganda.” In May, Kalinin was one of several Moldovan residents added to the EU’s blacklist for his actions in destabilizing Moldova as a so-called Kremlin backer. In October, Canada followed suit, including him among nine Moldovan individuals sanctioned at the time.
