Last September, Moldovans re-elected a pro-EU government, despite massive Russian influence campaigns – which included paying some 130,000 citizens to oppose the EU.

Russia inflicts damage on Moldova “via disinformation propaganda about the European Union, and making our citizens believe that the European Union is not interested in enlargement,” Gherasimov, who is also Moldova's deputy prime minister for European integration, told a small group of reporters in Brussels last week.

Moldovan president Maia Sandu has previously warned that the country is “going to get into Russian hands” if it can't join the EU, according to a podcast interview in January.

Joining the EU suddenly became an imperative after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. Ukraine applied for membership days after the invasion, and both Moldova and Georgia quickly followed.

Moldova wants to go fast. It aims to align its laws and administration with the EU accession criteria by 2028 to officially join by 2030.

EU candidate countries need to show that they are democratic, respect the rule of law and human rights, and that their economy can easily join the EU's single market.

They also need to adopt a huge amount of EU law into their legislation and add regulators to enforce it. This process usually takes several years. Western Balkan countries have been stuck in the EU's waiting room for almost 20 years.

Some analysts doubt that Ukraine could do this rapidly even if the war were over, but both Moldova and Ukraine are keen to make progress by formally opening negotiations in June.

The European Commission has already said the two countries are ready, but talks couldn't start without unanimous support from all EU governments. Hungary, under former prime minister Viktor Orbán, had threatened to veto Ukraine's accession bid. Orbán's ousting in April should allow talks to begin in June.

Ukraine's potential EU membership poses many questions for the EU too – with a population of around 38 million, it would have a large vote in EU decision-making. Germany's chancellor Friedrich Merz has suggested that Ukraine should get a form of membership-lite without voting rights.

Gherasimov doesn't want Moldova to get tangled up in EU worries over Ukraine's membership that could cause a delay. “With the political momentum at home, it's important to let us move at our own pace,” she said.

“We very much hope that's what we're going to see, because otherwise the reforms of Moldova can depend on the pace of reforms in other countries, which is demotivating to candidate countries,” she said.

She makes a case for Moldova as an easy new member for the EU to swallow.

“It's an advantage that we are a very small country, we are 2.5 million people,” she said, stressing that it speaks an existing EU language (Romanian) and has an economy that is already “highly integrated” with the EU.

One issue isn't easy: the Transnistrian region, which is recognised internationally as part of Moldova. Today, it is self-governed and “guarded” by Russian soldiers.

Cyprus' accession to the EU in 2004 already set a precedent for the EU to accept a state with a territorial dispute, allowing that region to be integrated into the Union eventually.

Moldova also has something to teach EU states about how to shrug off Russian influence, Gherasimov said.

“We've built a really good track record of how we can defend our democracy,” she said. “Moldova is a testing ground for tools that are then exported to your democracies. What we can bring to the table is to help you understand how Russia works, to understand what might be coming, and what works in our case to defend our democracy.”