The pro-Western president of Moldova, Maia Sandu, won re-election on Sunday in a high-stakes runoff vote in the former Soviet republic against a rival candidate she had denounced as “Moscow’s man.”
The vote — held a week after a contested election in Georgia, another former Soviet territory, handed victory to the Moscow-leaning governing party — has been closely watched by the United States, the European Union and Russia as a critical test of Moldova’s direction.