Russia condemned the elections in Moldova, held over the weekend, as unfair and said it did not consider the winner, Maya Sandu, as the country's legitimate president.
The pro-Western Sandu defeated a former prosecutor general backed by a traditionally pro-Russian party in a vote marked by allegations of election meddling by Moscow, which the Kremlin denies.
Official results showed that Sandu won thanks to strong support from Moldovans who voted from abroad. Within the country, she lost by a narrow margin, US News reported.
Kremlin press secretary Dmitry Peskov launched a scathing attack on the conduct of the election.
He said hundreds of thousands of Moldovans living in Russia were not allowed to vote - unlike Moldovans living in the West, whose votes were crucial to Sandu's victory.
"These elections were neither democratic nor fair. As far as Mrs Sandu is concerned - you know that in our opinion she is not the president of her country because in the country itself the majority of the population did not vote for her, and we are talking about a very, very divided society. These contradictions will certainly continue," Peskov noted.
U.S. President Joe Biden congratulated Sandu on her victory, saying Russia had failed to "undermine democratic institutions and electoral processes in Moldova."
According to him, the Moldovan people have "chosen to follow a path consistent with Europe and democracies everywhere".
Sandu wants to steer Moldova towards EU membership, but the small country bordering Ukraine and Romania is struggling to avoid Russia's orbit.
It relies heavily on Russian gas, and Russia maintains troops in the separatist region of Transnistria, which broke away from the rest of Moldova after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. | BGNES
