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From TikTok to the ticket A pro-Russian outsider is suddenly close to the Romanian presidency. Here’s what a Georgescu victory could mean for Ukraine and NATO.

Source: Meduza

Update: On December 6, Romania’s Constitutional Court annulled the first round of the country’s presidential election, according to Romanian media.

It’s now a familiar story: a right-wing outsider candidate whose campaign is seen as so unserious that media coverage classifies it as entertainment rather than news pulls off a shocking upset. But while Romanian presidential candidate Călin Georgescu has yet to secure victory, with a second round of voting still ahead, his rapid rise, incendiary rhetoric, and lack of a political party stand out even by the standards of the last decade’s populist surge. And while the Russian government has backed no shortage of far-right candidates in foreign elections in recent years, the success of its apparent influence in Georgescu’s campaign — as declassified Romanian intelligence documents indicate — is striking. Meduza explains why Georgescu’s first-round victory came as such a shock, what his presidency would mean for Ukraine and the rest of Europe, and what the newly released intelligence documents reveal about the forces promoting his candidacy.

From TikTok to the ticket

The first round of Romania’s 2024 presidential election came on November 24. Pre-election polling showed Marcel Ciolacu, Romania’s prime minister from the center-left Social Democratic Party (PSD), as the favorite to win among the 13 candidates running. Elena Lasconi from the center-right Save Romania Union, who stood out as the only candidate to oppose the idea that Ukraine should cede territory to Russia for the sake of peace, was also performing well.

The most prominent ultranationalist candidate in the race — who the ruling PSD was reportedly hoping would win just enough votes in the first round to give Ciolacu an easy win in the runoff — was George Simion, the 38-year-old leader of the right-wing AUR Alliance. Simion cited Donald Trump and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni as his political role models. Even he, however, blasted Russian President Vladimir Putin as a “war criminal” and declared his support for Romania’s NATO member status.

Largely absent from pre-election coverage, meanwhile, was Călin Georgescu, a 62-year-old sustainable development consultant who doesn’t belong to a political party and reached voters primarily on TikTok. Most polls predicted him winning less than 10 percent of the vote. Instead, he won about 23 percent — more than any other candidate. He and Lasconi, who came in second with about 19 percent, will now face off in the election’s second round on December 8.

Many of Georgescu’s past statements make Trump wannabe George Simion’s positions look moderate by comparison. According to Politico, he has described the 1989 revolution that overthrew longtime communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu as a “coup d’état used by the West to steal Romania’s resources.” In 2022, he said that Nazi collaborator Ion Antonescu and Corneliu Codreanu, founder of the World War II-era fascist and anti-Semitic Iron Guard movement, were “heroes of the Romanian nation.” He has also expressed skepticism about vaccines and called climate change a “global scam that has nothing to do with reality.”

In 2018, Georgescu referred to Vladimir Putin as “a true leader” in a TV interview, and four years later, he referred to the Russian president as “a man who loves his country.” And while this may be the extent of his direct praise for Putin in public statements, there’s a lot for the Kremlin to like about his political positions.

For example, in 2021, Georgescu called a NATO missile defense shield in Romania a “shame of diplomacy” and said the bloc would not defend its members if Russia attacked. He has also called for ending Romanian aid to Ukraine and said that rather than creating its own foreign policy, Bucharest should look to “Russian wisdom.” On December 4, he told Reuters that he plans to ban transit of Ukrainian grain through Romania if elected. Asked about whether Romania would continue prioritizing defense spending in accordance with NATO benchmarks, Georgescu said, “This is ultra-secondary, I am not even interested.”

‘Romania first’

According to journalist Paula Erizanu, who covers Romanian and Moldovan politics, it’s likely not Georgescu’s praise of fascist leaders or admiration for Putin that won him the election’s first round. “Some of the far-right messages and the pro-Russian messages actually came as a surprise to people who voted for Georgescu,” she told Meduza. “Some influencers and ordinary voters came out after election day saying that they regretted their votes because they did not know about the extreme views. Others dismissed them as fakes, because Georgescu himself dismisses them and contradicts himself all the time, and still others just ignored these views and focused on the anti-system messages.”

Erizanu said that one of Georgescu’s most popular TikTok talking points had to do with Romania’s support for Ukraine. “Georgescu uses the same line as Russian propaganda across the West, which is that Romania has its own problems, so why should it help Ukrainian refugees, especially as some of them are really wealthy? Why are there Ukrainian males in Romania when they should be fighting in the war in Ukraine? And why is Romania giving weapons to Ukraine when this war is not Romania’s war?” she said.

These ideas likely resonated with voters in part because of the uncertainty and fear many Romanians feel as neighbors of a country at war. “I would say that the political establishment in Romania has not been communicative enough to the public about what the war in Ukraine means to Romania and how they can guarantee Romanian people that they will not be sent to the front line,” Erizanu explained.

On the other hand, she noted that Georgescu has vowed to introduce mandatory military service if he wins the presidency. “[He argues that] it supposedly ‘ennobles’ young men, but that doesn’t seem to scare Romanians off,” she said.

Outside help

Georgescu announced at the start of his run that his campaign would have “zero budget” and be run entirely by volunteers. On December 4, however, the Romanian authorities declassified intelligence documents indicating that at least hundreds of dollars were paid to TikTok creators to promote the dark-horse candidate.

According to documents cited by Politico, approximately 25,000 accounts made up a network “directly associated with Georgescu’s campaign and became very active in those two weeks.” Another declassified document says that the activity “could have been coordinated by a state actor.” While the documents don’t directly assert that Russia was behind the operation, they contain circumstantial evidence pointing to Moscow and note similarities between the TikTok campaign and Russian influence operations in Ukraine and Moldova.

Journalist Paula Erizanu said that while the documents don’t prove that Georgescu was in “collusion” with Russia, it’s difficult to see how he could be unaware of such a large-scale campaign. “This is, of course, what [Alexandr] Stoianoglo, the presidential candidate in Moldova, said when proof appeared that Russia was buying votes for him: he said he didn’t know about any of these schemes so he wasn’t guilty,” she told Meduza. “But of course, if something is done in your name in order to boost you, you should at least be worried about it if you’re not complicit in it.”

Moldova’s knife-edge election and E.U. referendum

She also noted that Georgescu’s messages “seem to align with Russia’s funding into anti-vaxxer, conspiracy theories, and extremist content in the Romanian language.”

The shocking election results had aroused suspicion even before the intelligence documents were declassified. On November 28, Romania’s Supreme Council of National Defence announced that a document analysis had shown that an unnamed candidate in the presidential race “benefited from massive exposure due to preferential treatment granted by the TikTok platform.” This prompted the country’s Constitutional Court to order a recount of votes. On December 2, the court validated the votes and confirmed Georgescu’s lead.

The same day, Vladimir Putin joked about the recount, saying: “The authorities didn’t like one of the candidates, so they decided to recount the votes.”

‘Agents of chaos’

A Georgescu victory in the runoff election could be bad news not just for Ukraine and NATO but also for Romania itself.

“At the moment, analysts are talking about Romania turning into a sort of Hungary or Slovakia with Georgescu in power, and that would mean not getting E.U. funds, which are critical in order to keep Romania’s economy going,” Erizanu told Meduza, adding that Romania currently has a large budget deficit.

At the same time, she noted, it’s difficult to predict what Georgescu’s skepticism of international institutions would mean in practice. “It’s not clear whether Romania would actually withdraw from the E.U. or NATO,” she explained. “Just like we can’t predict what Trump will do once he comes to power, it’s unpredictable, to a large extent, what Georgescu will do if he comes to power. These are agents of chaos.”

In any case, according to Erizanu, Georgescu becoming Romania’s president would almost certainly give Moscow reason to celebrate. “There is so much information, including the declassified intelligence documents, showing that Russia was behind Georgescu’s campaign, so we can basically foresee Georgescu withdrawing support for Ukraine and becoming a kind of unfriendly neighbor to Ukraine and pursuing Russian agendas within the E.U. and NATO,” she said.