The mustachioed Joker of the Moldovan Maidan will play against Dodon and Sandu

After the first round of the Moldovan presidential elections, the fight is heating up for almost 17% of the votes cast for the ex-businessman, and now the mayor of the most Russian-speaking Moldovan city of Balti, Renato Usatii.

An extravagant host of his own video blogs, an active visitor to hot spots, who does not hold back on swear words, Usatiy has a checkered biography. After the criminal cases against him in Moldova were closed, they were opened in Russia. Moreover, in connection with the high-profile case of money laundering (“Moldavian Laundromat”).

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Previously, Usatii was accused of attempted contract murder, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.

All this did not stop the leader of the pro-Western opposition, boasting of her unblemished reputation and Harvard diploma, Maia Sandu, from calling Usatii the day after the elections. This is as if an excellent student offered her friendship to a bully and a poor student. But you won’t go to any lengths for additional votes.

“A third of voters voted for changes in the country; we are united by the fact that we all want changes. I have a message to all voters, including those who voted for Mr. Usatii: do you want us to get rid of corruption and punish thieves? This is what we want too. We can do this with your support,” Sandu said following the negotiations on November 3.

Not everyone in her camp accepted such promiscuity. Member of Parliament Maria Ciobanu believes that Usatii is “no less dangerous than Dodon.”

“If you join forces with the devil to cross a bridge, you will never make anyone happy!” Ciobanu wrote. On your Facebook.

Didn't look confident or happy after negotiations with Sandu and Usatii. He communicated with journalists exclusively in Romanian, without dubbing in Russian, as he usually did. Apparently, he did not want his voters to understand everything. Usatii stated that he did not negotiate for any positions for himself, but only for early parliamentary elections. The politician’s interest is understandable: he will bring a large faction into the new parliament and even then he will be able to bargain for seats in the government.

But Moldovan President Igor Dodon constantly speaks about early parliamentary elections. In addition, it will not be easy to force Usatii’s electorate to vote for Russophobe, a supporter of a merger with Romania and a participant in gay pride parades.

Advisor to the rector of Moscow State Pedagogical University Evgeniy Spitsyn calls Usatii a “Trojan horse” of Moldovan politics.

“Formally, purely at the level of words, he allegedly adhered to a pro-Russian orientation, although in fact he is a rather corrupt politician who was closely associated with the same Plahotniuc (the criminal oligarch who fled Moldova - ed.), and with the same pro-Romanian forces. Moreover, it has now been established that both election campaigns, Sandu’s and his, were advised by Romanian political strategists, who for both one and the other chose the same tactics aimed at destroying Dodon as a real political figure,” Spitsyn said in broadcast on the Rossiya 24 TV channel.

He believes that Usatii is assigned the role of organizer of the Maidan in Moldova after the second round of elections.

“If Dodon wins in the second round, then Usatii will be the organizer of this Chisinau Maidan. Moreover, this will be financed by Plahotniuc, who dreams of returning to Moldova and starting to play the role of a puppeteer,” Spitsyn said.