Former presidential candidate Călin Georgescu whose shock win of Romania’s first round presidential election last year wasn’t acting as a lone wolf; he was supported by a Russia-backed network which included wealthy Romanians, the president says.
But the project to make Georgescu, 63, president, which ultimately failed, originated in Moscow, Romania’s president Nicusor Dan has publicly confirmed.
In an interview with Digi24 on Thursday, President Dan asserted that Georgescu, who improbably won the first round of Nov. 24 presidential elections, was “Russia’s man.”
The comments appear to be part of a concerted effort by Romanian authorities to shed light on the annulled elections and share their findings with the public.
This week Romania’s prosecutor general, Alex Florența, called the investigation into alleged election meddling “the most serious monitored in the last 35 years,” and that Romania, a NATO and EU member, was under sustained hybrid warfare aimed at destabilizing society and manipulating public opinion against its government. Moscow has denied it interfered.
Romania’s Constitutional Court annulled the presidential election two days before the runoff and a do-over was held in May which Mr. Dan, 55, won.
Mr. Dan spoke to Romanian television network, Digi24, on Thursday evening, after a meeting of the country’s top defense body, the CSAT, in which officials confirmed the procedure for shooting down unauthorized flying objects that violate Romanian airspace. Romania has confirmed 11 Russian-originating drones have violated its airspace since Russia invaded Ukraine in Feb, 2022.
The president was asked about a surge in popularity of the opposition AUR party, whicg is polling at 41%?
I’m not a great fan of AUR, and it’s a big disappointment for parties that have governed Romania in the past, including the presidential institution. It’s our job to regain people’s confidence.
The party is popular, not really because of its ideology (Eds: far-right/populist] because people are looking for an alternative because they see corruption and no economic perspective, he said.
He was asked about high-stake parliamentary elections this weekend in Moldova.
I don’t want it to things to be interpreted and I don’t want to influence (Eds: the outcome) in any way. They are very important and very serious elections. I call on Romanians who have dual citizenship, Bessarabians (Eds: what Romanians call Moldovans) living in Romania, to make an effort to vote, these are very important elections.
Killer question for the Romanian president.
Q: Based on the information you have, are you sure that Mr. Calin Georgescu was the Russians’ man in last year’s elections?
‘Yes.’
“I invite journalists to investigate. Many of the things presented by the Prosecutor General are very abstract. You journalists have a much greater ability to explain things in a way that people understand,” he said.
Georgescu was charged with plotting a coup and stoke public unrest aided by Russian-linked paramilitaries on Sept. 17.
The president was asked whether he supported banning TikTok?
Not really. I’d say social media isn’t good for all age groups. It’s a discussion society needs to have.
He said that the Romanian state had not had an ‘optimal’ reaction to widespread disinformation.
Asked about the step to cancel the elections, and lack of communication, President Dan said: “Obviously everyone got it wrong, including (ex President) Klaus Iohannis. But what I want to appreciate is that on December 6, when the Constitutional Court made the ruling, the president and the institutions that sat on the court and the court itself had the courage to take an extreme (and) extremely unusual decision.
It was a moment of weakness and error, but it ended with an extremely courageous decision, one we should welcome
Compared to how naïve we were in December 2024, we have come to a time when we are aware of this hybrid war, which was somehow just theorized for us. We have a lot of evidence from abroad – reports from French, Spanish, UK intelligence services, NATO reports, the EU. They all say that we are dealing with an informational attack by Russia on European countries, some explicitly say Romania.
Romania’s General Prosecutor’s Office says three things:
1 The process of systematic disinformation. The Prosecutor’s Office proves that there were elements paid for by Russia.
2 The person who had the actual financing of one million euros was Bogdan Peșchir
3 The attempt to destabilize (Romania) was Horatiu Potra (Eds: mercenary leader detained in Dubai this week, reportedly seeking asylum in Russia) based on information. He tried to do the same thing in African countries.
I confess that at the time I heard the information, I was somehow skeptical: what could 10 people with a few knives and ten grenades actually do?
But there were not just a handful, but 70; they were people who had been trained to stoke unrest using a public meeting
Of these three distinct things, the most important is this: the connection the three had to the disinformation war.
Calin Georgescu’s supporters, people of good faith, claim that we have not proven the connection with Russia and that the state illegally canceled some elections. Now we have that proof.
I’ll give you an example of a report by the UK secret services issued in July and made public. It says that they identified 3 or 4 Russian action groups that carried out either cyberattack or disinformation actions in 2014, 2017, 2020, 2022 (Eds: in Romania) and the report came in 2025. Proving this type of terrorist attack is called counterintelligence activity, and can take a few years.
As we move forward with the investigation, we will prove more things, but it may take time.
As President of Romania, I am aware that there are ongoing investigations. In any case, there is a lot of substantial material which finally gives clear evidence that Russia electronically manipulated the 2024 elections.
On December 6, there was talk of the influence of a state actor and it seemed that it was something that fell from the sky without any real evidence. The we had ave TikTok saying it was a state actor, which obviously can only be Russia.
From then until now, things have become clearer.
Q: Do you suspect or have evidence for the involvement of Romanian institutions?
I know some things, but I prefer not to give the answer at this moment. What I can say is that Calin Georgescu was not a lone wolf who some vision and convinced 2-3 million people, but had behind him a network that included some Romanians with money.
Q: And they were linked to a project whose origins were in Moscow?
Exactly.
Russia takes aim at Romania for investigating ex-presidential candidate Călin Georgescu
