Beniamino Irdi
In December 2024, Romania’s intelligence agencies revealed that Russia had orchestrated a highly sophisticated social media campaign to boost Călin Georgescu, the far-right, pro-Russian presidential candidate. This operation successfully exploited TikTok’s extreme popularity in the country—some 47 percent of the population were believed to have an account already in 2014, the highest rate in the European Union (Romania Insider, December 6, 2024).
The pro-Georgescu TikTok campaign represented a blatant attempt to influence the outcome of the Romanian presidential election. Georgescu won the first round of the presidential race on November 24, 2024, only for the country’s Constitutional Court to annul the results two days before the December 8 runoff, citing a series of irregularities in his campaign funding, including allegations of Russian interference on his behalf (POLITICO, December 6, 2024; Adevarul, April 24). The second round of voting in December 2024 was cancelled, and the first round of the election has been rescheduled for May 4.
In February, the investigation into these irregularities deepened, leading to nationwide raids that uncovered an arsenal of weapons, over a million euros in cash, and tickets to Moscow at the home of Horațiu Potra, Georgescu’s bodyguard (Adevarul, March 13; for more on Potra, see Militant Leadership Monitor, June 27, 2024). On March 9, Romania‘s Electoral Commission formally rejected Georgescu’s candidacy for the upcoming election, citing his “failure to comply with the legal regulations” (Constitutional Court of Romania, March 11). The response to the court’s decision was swift, with fights breaking out in the streets of Bucharest between Georgescu’s supporters and police. Elon Musk chimed in as well, calling the decision “crazy” on X (X/@elonmusk, March 9; YouTube/@Digi24 [Romania], March 10).
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