How if Feels to be Targeted by a Smear Campaign
(not great... but also kinda funny?)
Over this past weekend I had the interesting experience of finding myself the target of a pro-Russian disinformation campaign. While Out of Place, Out of Context is a brand new publication, I’m coming up on my 4 year anniversary of writing on Substack. In that time I’ve written Moldova Matters and grown it to be the #1 source of English language news about Moldova. Until now my experience has been really positive - the publication only attracted one troll who basically left nonsensical and vaguely pro-Russian comments until I banned him.
This changed over the weekend when a “news” site called Ro-Diaspora published an article attacking me and claiming that I “manipulate the truth in Moldova.” This is a new experience for me, and not really “newsworthy” since journalists in Moldova get a lot of hate on a daily basis, so I decided to share some reflections on the experience here.
How’d We Get Here?
The story of this article starts back in December of last year when I published an investigation tracking how a little known pro-Russian Moldovan politician was being supported by an $85,000 lobby / PR contract with a Washington DC firm. If you’re interested you can read the article here:
The salient point is that the politician in question, Vasilie Tarlev, recently ran for president of Moldova in the recent October elections. He did not do well, garnering around 3% of the vote. Media reporting before the election linked him to fugitive Moldovan oligarch Ilan Shor and, by proxy, the Kremlin’s efforts at interfering in Moldova’s democracy.
I was quite proud of this story as it used a combination of publicly available Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA) filings, tax records, text messages and congressional delegation ethics filings to paint a pretty damning picture of how money of unclear origin is used to try to influence American politicians1.
While I was proud of the article it didn’t make much of a splash. Tarlev is considered to be an extremely minor and inconsequential politician in Moldova. I got some nice reader feedback and that was about it.
This changed on January 23rd when the highly respected Moldovan investigative journalist and director of news outlet ZdG, Alina Radu, wrote an op-ed about how pro-Russian politicians in Moldova were falling over themselves to congratulate Donald Trump on his re-election. In that op-ed she cited and links my article about Tarlev showing the growing links between Kremlin-linked politicians and DC lobbyists.
This triggered an immediate response from website ro-diaspora attacking Alina Radu on January 22nd and followed yesterday with the article attacking me.
What’s ro-diaspora.com ?
Good question! I had never heard of this site before these attack articles started showing up. According to their description the site calls itself:
“The only and first newspaper with and about Romanians and Moldovans in the diaspora on all continents.”
The site’s CEO and editor-in-chief is named Damaschin Silviu. According to his facebook page he is originally from Galati Romania but now works as a “campaign manager” at a Romanian restaurant in Rome in addition to running the website.
The website has sections for news about the Moldovan and Romanian diaspora, news from Moldova and Romania and lists of diaspora related events. It appears that the site has been active since March 2024 when the first articles in the news section went up.
It doesn’t take very long to see a pattern in their news coverage. Article after article sings the praises of… Vasilie Tarlev. They praise his policies, emphasize his religious devotion and attack the current government in Moldova while quoting criticisms from… Mr. Tarlev.
It also doesn’t take long to see that Damaschin Silviu is not really an unbiased journalist. He has organized the first diaspora office for Tarlev’s “Future of Moldova” party outside Moldova in Rome. He also conducts fawning interviews of Tarlev for his TikTok and youtube pages.
So this explains why Ro-Disapora has taken a disliking to me and Alina Radu. Let’s look at how Tarlev’s people go after their critics…
David Smith - “Business Failure” and “Blogger”
Where to even start with this one. This “article” is basically an extended character assassination attempt riddled with insinuations and more than a few outright lies. The purpose it seems to be discrediting me and suggesting that Alina Radu and I have formed some kind of secret alliance to pursue a “hidden agenda.” This agenda is apparently the spreading of “fake news” and “slander” about Vasilie Tarlev. The article suggests my work is a “clear example of poor journalism, which could attract lawsuits for defamation and slander” because it lacks “concrete evidence.”
Naturally, no rebuttals of any of the evidence provided in my article was offered. In fact, simply asserting that there was no evidence (such as signed contracts, text messages, etc) is about the whole defense they make of Tarlev. Most time is focused on what a total prick and failure I am.
So according to ro-diaspora Mr. Smith is primarily defined by his business failures. Particularly the closure of my restaurant Smokehouse2. Interestingly, they state that my restaurant was…
“permanently closed by the authorities, following inspections that revealed serious violations of hygiene standards, as well as the illegal use of public space for the terrace”
Where this comes from I have no idea. We closed Smokehouse in December 2021 due to the economic effects of the ongoing pandemic. We sold our second location Taproom 27 in August 2023 - also due to the lasting economic damage of years of restrictions. Both locations are now back open. There were no serious violations or anything of the kind. The “illegal use of space” particularly boggles the mind as we never had a terrace at all. We definitely did have run-ins with corrupt public health authorities but this was mostly years before we closed down (and we fought them off without paying their bribes or giving in to their threats).
Comically, they also dug up a 1 star review from 2016 to try and make their case. In it a man complains that the restaurant smells like wet paint and is unsuitable for children (it was a bar). The fact is, restaurants get bad reviews sometimes - it’s life. Some are reasonable, some are really weird. Overall, we held an average 4.5 rating over our 8 years in operation.
My point isn’t to defend myself here but to point out the lazy absurdity of it all. Calling me a “bitter joke” of a businessman does not make much of a case for Vasilie Tarlev’s political ambitions in Moldova.
My favorite part about this article is their choice to use this photo of me without any explanation.
It seems like a good hit piece would have made up a fun story with this one but instead they just post it without comment.
The actual context of the photo has a bit of fun irony in it actually. The photo is around 10 years old and taken in the restaurant Kryivka in Lviv Ukraine. The restaurant’s theme is that of an underground partisan hideout from past Ukrainian resistance movements against Russia imperialism. The restaurant itself is not advertised and can only be accessed via a steel door in an alley off the town square. If you knock on the door a viewing slot opens and a man demands barks “password!” in Ukrainian. You must reply Слава Україні! (Slava Ukraini! / Glory to Ukraine!) to enter. He replies Героям слава! (Heroiam slava! / Glory to Heroes) and makes you drink a shot of Ukrainian honey vodka (Medovukha) right at the door. The guard claims that such a drink will kill Russians where they stand and as such prevents them from entering the restaurant. Needless to say the atmosphere there is “unfriendly” to Russian sympathizers - and that was long before the war.
So yeah, the place is filled with guns and old military equipment. Tourists take pictures and enjoy traditional Ukrainian food and music. It’s also a reminder of just how long Ukraine has been fighting to escape Russia’s imperial ambitions.
The article about me ends with a call to “Stay tuned for more details” (about me) - presumably in coming articles. Since I wasn’t asked for comment on this brilliant journalistic endeavor of theirs let me be the first to reach out. I’d be thrilled to meet and talk with any of the authors or with Mr. Tarlev himself…
But I insist we meet at Kryivka.
“Try" is important here. There’s no evidence that Tarlev ever traveled to the United States as planned and attended any of these meetings. While I can’t say either way, it’s possible that what he was doing seemed a bit transparent in Washington as well and so he didn’t get far. Who knows.
If you’re curious about any of my actual background you can read about it here.
Great that you’re taking this libellous nonsense with such good humour, David.