Did Russia Meddle in Romania's Elections? The Answer is Comedy Gold
It was not the Russians that helped Mr. Călin Georgescu win, it was president Klaus Iohannis's own party's weird blunder.
Romania's democratic drama took a farcical turn on Friday night when it was revealed that it wasn’t the Russians who financed parts of populist independent Călin Georgescu’s successful TikTok campaign but rather President Iohannis's own ruling party, in a debacle of epic scale. How does that even make sense? Well, it’s complicated.
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The Short Story:
PNL tried to use Georgescu as a stalking horse for their own candidate, Nicolae Ciucă. They assumed Georgescu would only attract fringe audiences, giving him a slight edge needed to change hierarchies, but it all turned into a huge blunder when his messages went viral, ultimately securing a tremendous amount of votes.
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The Long Story:
Romania’s Social Democratic Party (PSD) is the dominant force in parliamentary elections but struggles in presidential run-offs when most other parties form a coalition against them. The last PSD candidate to win the presidency was Ion Iliescu in 2000. Back then, his opponent, Corneliu Vadim-Tudor, was seen as an extremist, which prompted even PSD’s staunchest opponents to “hold their noses” and vote for Iliescu.
This time, PSD’s leader, Marcel Ciolacu, faced a similar challenge and hoped for a similar solution. If George Simion (AUR), labeled 'far-right,' advanced to the run-off, Ciolacu could likely secure victory by rallying the other 'democratic' parties against Simion.
The controversial disqualification of another populist right-wing candidate, Diana Șoșoacă (SOS), by the Constitutional Court conveniently helped this strategy, as she had been cutting into Simion’s support base. However, this also hurt the chances of other candidates like Nicolae Ciucă (PNL) and Elena Lasconi (USR), who accused PSD of manipulating the Constitutional Court to eliminate Șoșoacă.
Ciucă, a former general and Iraq war veteran, is a weak candidate whose primary political asset is his loyalty to President Klaus Iohannis, who promoted him to Chief of Staff of the Army, then Prime Minister, and finally PNL party leader.
Enter Călin Georgescu, a little-known candidate with minuscule chances, polling below 5% even days before the election. That’s when PNL devised a risky strategy: give Georgescu’s campaign a small boost, hoping he would siphon just enough votes from Simion to push Ciucă into the run-off.
According to investigative journalists led by Cătălin Tolontan at Hotnews and snoop.ro, PNL funded a TikTok influencer campaign designed to bypass campaign finance rules, but its beneficiary was Georgescu.
At the time, Mr. Ciucă even protested publicly after TikTok was ordered to take down the ads, as they didn’t obey campaign financing rules, all while he kept pretending that they did actually belong to Georgescu.
PNL relied on traditional political calculations, assuming that a modest TikTok campaign would yield a proportional bump in votes. What they didn’t account for was Georgescu’s electrifying and viral content, which resonated far beyond expectations.
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The Twist:
Does this fully explain Georgescu’s surprising success? Certainly not. But it does debunk the Russian interference narrative, which turns out to be a brazen fabrication.
When intelligence service reports were declassified, they sparked skepticism. Claims of Russian interference were made, but no concrete evidence was presented—just conjecture and vague parallels. “It walks like a duck and quacks like a duck,” was their reasoning. The centerpiece of this narrative was Georgescu’s TikTok campaign, which intelligence agencies claimed mirrored a Russian campaign in Moldova. However, PNL knew it was their own doing and remained silent. President Iohannis, presumably aware of this from his party, perpetuated the lie. Intelligence agencies, equipped to uncover the truth, still propagated claims to NATO allies that “it was the Russians.”
One of the agencies, the Special Telecommunications Service (STS), even went so far as to publicly announce that there were no meaningful cyber attacks, effectively suggesting that their work had been misrepresented at a higher level.
A day before the truth emerged, President Iohannis admitted there was no concrete proof of Russian interference, nor grounds to summon Russia’s ambassador for explanations. His remarks were puzzling:
"I don't hold anyone responsible, as the intervention was so subtle and complex that most of what happened was only found out after the first round. Not everything. (...) None of those who attack us make it in a transparent manner. It's almost impossible to find the link and the thread. They use servers connected to other servers which are in turn connected to other servers. Make no mistake, they don't leave an actual signature. It's very difficult to document. (...) In cyberspace, for malign action, attribution is very complicated, because you can only do it if you have material, undoubtable proof. In cyberspace it's complicated to have something undoubtable (...) These multiple actions can't be done by individual actors, a group or a party. They have such breadth and complexity that only a state actor can do it. Intelligence agencies know these patterns very well and it's known who acts like this, and this time it was Russia"
In the same press conference, he expressed frustration at being shunned at a meeting about Ukraine held by NATO SecGen Mark Rutte, without anyeone even telling him why. „I think it's a bit unusual”, Mr. Iohannis quipped.
Was there any Russian interference at all? We don’t know for sure. There were some Denial of Service attacks, succesfully rejected, still unattributed. Some local fact checkers and activists are still scouring for anything russian, to at least save face after having made some unhinged calls to arms.
However, it’s safe to say by now that the hysteria around Russian meddling was more of a convenient smokescreen for political embarrassment.
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The Fallout:
After all the political maneuvering, Election Day delivered results that no one anticipated:
Călin Georgescu (Independent): 23%. Even his most optimistic supporters were shocked.
Elena Lasconi (USR): 19%. Outperforming her party, Lasconi might have been the strongest candidate against anyone but Georgescu.
Marcel Ciolacu (PSD): 19%. A few thousand votes short of Lasconi, marking the first time a PSD candidate failed to reach the run-off.
George Simion (AUR): 14%. Well below expectations, weakening both his and his party’s standing.
Nicolae Ciucă (PNL): Less than 9%. Not even half of Georgescu’s total, not even half as many as Mr. Georgescu, the guy who his party picked as a "stalking horse".
As Georgescu surged toward a landslide 60% victory in the run-off, the Constitutional Court took the extraordinary step of canceling the election mid-vote. But by then, the damage was done: The genie had broken out of the bottle and now they scramble unsuccessfully to put him back in.
There’s no appeal to the Constitutional Court’s decision, but political tensions are so high that some action might be warranted.
Georgescu is exploring legal options in ordinary courts, but outright success is unlikely.
Mainstream parties are scrambling to form a new cabinet amidst drama and threats to bug out, sending stock markets into turmoil.
President Klaus Iohannis, on December the 22nd started the first day beyond his two five-year terms in office, without the provision for war or catastrophe, marking a first in contemporary European politics west of Russia and Belarus.
Two weeks after canceling, the new election day is not yet known, nor do we know when it might be announced.