Russian Influence on the Romania Election: Kremlin Tactics Boosted Anti-Woke Populist

Russ­ian influ­ence on the Roman­ian pres­i­den­tial elec­tion oper­a­tions had reached unprece­dent­ed sophis­ti­ca­tion through social media manip­u­la­tion. On May 16, 2025, The Wash­ing­ton Post report­ed that now defeat­ed ultra­na­tion­al­ist can­di­date George Simion had surged to fron­trun­ner sta­tus ahead of Sun­day’s pres­i­den­tial runoff, employ­ing anti-woke mes­sag­ing while ben­e­fit­ing from what offi­cials describe as Russ­ian-linked dis­in­for­ma­tion net­works estab­lished ini­tial­ly to sup­port his now-banned ally Calin Georges­cu. The arti­cle begins:

When Roma­ni­a’s con­sti­tu­tion­al court annulled Novem­ber’s pres­i­den­tial elec­tions over cam­paign finance vio­la­tions and an illic­it social media cam­paign, and lat­er barred the lead­ing right-wing can­di­date from run­ning, it seemed like the end of a cam­paign that Roman­ian author­i­ties said was cor­rupt­ed by Russ­ian inter­fer­ence. George Simion, an ultra­na­tion­al­ist mem­ber of par­lia­ment, told reporters that the Decem­ber court deci­sion to annul the elec­tion was “a coup d’é­tat against the will of the peo­ple.” He called for protests against anoth­er rul­ing in March to bar his polit­i­cal ally, Calin Georges­cu, who had emerged from obscu­ri­ty to lead that abort­ed poll.

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/05/16/romania-election-simion-georgescu-putin-russia/

Key Points

• For­mer US Ambas­sador Adri­an Zuck­er­man accused Simion of using “anti-woke, anti-DEI and anti-glob­al­ist iso­la­tion­ist” rhetoric as “a thin veil to hide Putin’s author­i­tar­i­an playbook.”
• Roman­ian inves­ti­ga­tion uncov­ered near­ly 25,000 pro-Georges­cu Tik­Tok accounts acti­vat­ed in just three weeks, cre­at­ing unprece­dent­ed viral reach that exceed­ed Tay­lor Swift’s metrics.
• Russ­ian bil­lion­aire Kon­stan­tin Mal­ofeyev cel­e­brat­ed Simion’s first-round vic­to­ry, prais­ing “Ortho­dox Roma­nia” for reject­ing “the exter­nal man­age­ment of the globalists.”
• Offi­cials believe Moscow spent years prepar­ing the ground through envi­ron­men­tal protests and anti-vac­cine mes­sag­ing to iden­ti­fy Roma­ni­ans sus­cep­ti­ble to con­spir­a­cy theories.

Russian Influence, the Global National Conservative Alliance, and the Romanian Election

The 2024–2025 Roman­ian pres­i­den­tial elec­tion spot­light­ed the Glob­al Nation­al Con­ser­v­a­tive Alliance (GNCA) as a cen­tral vehi­cle for advanc­ing nation­al­ist, anti-EU, and anti-NATO pol­i­tics, with the Alliance for the Union of Roma­ni­ans (AUR) and its lead­ers, George Simion and Călin Georges­cu, serv­ing as the Roman­ian face of this inter­na­tion­al move­ment. The GNCA’s grow­ing influ­ence was evi­dent as Simion and Georges­cu lever­aged coor­di­nat­ed dig­i­tal cam­paigns and social media manip­u­la­tion to expand their reach. At the same time, near­ly a quar­ter of Roman­ian-lan­guage Telegram chan­nels sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly pro­mot­ed nation­al con­ser­v­a­tive and Krem­lin-aligned mes­sag­ing.

This surge in GNCA activ­i­ty unfold­ed against the back­drop of Russia’s long­stand­ing ambi­tion to posi­tion itself as the ide­o­log­i­cal leader of the glob­al con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment, with Pres­i­dent Putin explic­it­ly seek­ing to make Rus­sia the cen­ter of the GNCA and exploit its net­works for infor­ma­tion war­fare and influ­ence operations—a strat­e­gy that has encoun­tered resis­tance from some Euro­pean far-right fac­tions. Despite the GNCA’s efforts and Russia’s hybrid tac­tics, Roman­ian vot­ers ulti­mate­ly reject­ed the alliance’s agen­da, reaf­firm­ing pro-EU gov­er­nance. Still, the episode under­scored how the GNCA—backed by Russ­ian strate­gic interests—has become a sig­nif­i­cant force in Euro­pean pol­i­tics, capa­ble of mobi­liz­ing sup­port, exploit­ing dig­i­tal vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties, and chal­leng­ing demo­c­ra­t­ic norms across borders.

Disclaimer

The Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) employs AI through­out the post­ing process, includ­ing gen­er­at­ing sum­maries of news items, the intro­duc­tion, key points, and often the “con­text” sec­tion. We rec­om­mend ver­i­fy­ing all infor­ma­tion before use. Addi­tion­al­ly, images are AI-gen­er­at­ed and intend­ed sole­ly for illus­tra­tive pur­pos­es. While they rep­re­sent the events or indi­vid­u­als dis­cussed, they should not be inter­pret­ed as real-world photography.