Kremlin says Moldovan election was unfair, questions Sandu's legitimacy

 Reuters: MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia on Tuesday denounced Moldova's weekend election as unfair and said it did not see the winner, Maia Sandu, as the legitimate president of the country.

Pro-Western Sandu defeated a former prosecutor general backed by a traditionally pro-Russian party in a vote marred by allegations of election meddling by Moscow, which the Kremlin denied.

Official results showed that Sandu had won thanks to strong backing from Moldovans voting from overseas. Within the country's borders, she lost by a narrow margin.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov delivered a scathing attack on the conduct of Sunday's election at his daily briefing with reporters.

He said hundreds of thousands of Moldovans living in Russia had not been allowed to vote - unlike Moldovans living in the West, whose votes were critical to Sandu's victory.

"These elections were neither democratic nor fair," Peskov said.

"As for Ms. Sandu - you know that she is not, in our understanding, 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," he said.

Russian's Foreign Ministry earlier described the Moldovan contest as "the most undemocratic election campaign in all the years of Moldovan independence".

U.S. President Joe Biden congratulated Sandu on her victory though, saying Russia had failed to "undermine Moldova’s democratic institutions and election processes."

The Moldovan people, he said, had "chosen to pursue a path aligned with Europe and democracies everywhere".

Sandu wants to steer Moldova towards membership of the European Union, but the small country, bordering Ukraine and Romania, has struggled to escape Russia's orbit.

It relies heavily on Russian gas, and Russia maintains troops in a breakaway region that split from the rest of Moldova as the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.