CHISINAU, Moldova — Pro-Moscow candidate Igor Dodon seized about 56 percent of the vote in Moldova’s presidential election Sunday, with about 90 percent of the vote counted.

Dodon won on promises to restore ties with Moscow. His rival Maia Sandu, a former World Bank official who ran on an anticorruption ticket, was polling at 44 percent.

Dodon tapped into popular anger about corruption under the pro-European government that came to power in 2009, particularly over about $1 billion that vanished from Moldovan banks before 2014 parliamentary elections.

As results came in, Dodon urged Moldovans to be calm.

Dodon, who heads the opposition Socialists’ Party, says he wants to federalize Moldova to include the breakaway region of Trans-Dniester where more than 1,000 Russian troops are stationed.

Russia and the West seek greater influence over the strategically placed but impoverished agricultural country of 3.5 million.

Sandu needed a high turnout to stand a chance of winning. The final turnout was 53.3 percent, a discouraging result for Sandu.

In an unusual development, 9,000 voted in the separatist region of Trans-Dniester, where residents usually do not vote in Moldovan election.

Moldovans lined up for hours to vote in Paris, Milan, Dublin, and the London borough of Stratford where about 700 Moldovans were unable to vote. Election authorities said ballots had run out in Stratford, Bucharest, Moscow, and Bologna, Italy.

Sandu called for the resignation of authorities organizing the vote and after voting ended said the elections had been badly organized.

If elected, she pledged to appoint ‘‘honest, righteous people and good professionals ... this will be the first signal that things change for the better in Moldova.’’

The former education minister, who heads the Action and Solidarity Party, says the former Soviet republic will have a more prosperous future in the EU.

Dodon, who nearly won the election in the first round two weeks ago and leads in recent polls, has promised to restore friendly relations with Moscow. He has recently hedged his bets, saying he also seeks good relations with Moldova’s neighbors, Romania and Ukraine.

He has been criticized in Ukraine for saying Crimea, annexed by Russia in 2014, is Russian territory. Russia punished Moldova with a trade embargo on wine, fruit and vegetables after it signed a trade association deal with the EU in 2014.