A number of appointments to key security and judiciary posts in Moldova are raising questions about the new government’s commitment to depoliticise state institutions following the departure from power of oligarch Vladimir Plahotniuc’s Democratic Party, PD.

The current governing alliance of the pro-European ACUM bloc and the pro-Russian Socialists says Moldova became a ‘captured state’ under Plahotniuc, with courts, police and media all in his pocket.

Barely two months in power, critics say the Socialists are acting in the same vein and that a spate of appointments involving individuals closely connected to the Socialist Party and its leader, Moldovan President Igor Dodon, do not bode well for a promised root-and-branch overhaul of Moldova’s much-criticised judicial system.