"Europe is preparing to turn Moldova into a reservation for refugees. In exchange for subsidies, Moldova, together with the EU, is drafting a plan to relocate refugees who have flooded Europe to the country," the authors of Shkvarka News wrote in a June 11 post. According to them, French lawmakers are supposedly coming to Moldova in early July specifically to discuss these plans.
To support their theory, they published two "pieces of evidence": a cover of the French publication La Tribune with a headline about senators negotiating with President Maia Sandu, and a video clip from a Moldovan TV broadcast in which the anchor talks about plans to settle Middle Eastern refugees in the republic.
A fact-check by the Weekly Top Fake team showed that both materials were fakes.
The image of the La Tribune cover is dated June 7, issue 8112. The headline reads: "A group of French senators plans to negotiate with President Sandu about relocating refugees from France to Moldova in exchange for financial support."
However, the official website of the publication shows that the June 7 issue contains different materials than those presented by the Telegram channel. There is no article with that headline in the issue.
The situation is similar with the video. In the second piece, the TV8 anchor says:
"Moldova's industry has been declining for the fourth year in a row and has almost returned to 2015 levels. ... The European Union is ready to support Moldova in exchange for placing refugees in the country. The government sees this option as the main way to address economic problems. A program to relocate Middle Eastern refugees to Moldova is already being developed."
The original recording of this broadcast from May 2025 is available on TV8's YouTube channel. Up to the 25-second mark, the text matches what Shkvarka News published. After that point, in the original, the correspondent continues discussing industry, and the segment about refugees is missing from the broadcast.
Thus, the authors of Shkvarka News used a fake newspaper cover and edited video to portray a diplomatic visit as proof of plans to turn Moldova into a "reservation for refugees." Notably, the channel's authors use the Soviet-era name "Moldavia" instead of the official "Republic of Moldova."