US calls for investigation into Russia's "malicious" interference in Romanian elections

2024-12-05 15:15:00, Kosova & Bota CNA

US calls for investigation into Russia's "malicious" interference

The United States has called for a full investigation into Moscow's moves to influence parliamentary and presidential elections in Romania, after documents released on Wednesday revealed that the country was targeted by a "hybrid act of aggression by Russia" that led to the pro-Russian candidate's surprise victory last month.

Romania's Supreme Council of National Defense (CSAT) released the classified documents, saying they show the NATO and EU member was targeted by various coordinated actions ahead of the first round of the 24 presidential election. November, which was won by Calin Georgescu.

The council said Georgescu won thanks to a concerted social media campaign, which was likely orchestrated by a "state actor".

In the parliamentary elections a week later, the pro-Russian parties saw a big increase, taking about a third of the votes, although the pro-European parties seem to have received enough votes to form the governing coalition.

On December 8, voters will decide the winner of the presidential election in a runoff between Georgescu and pro-European candidate Elena Lasconi.

According to the declassified documents, Romania's intelligence service believes that Georgescu was massively promoted on TikTok with support from Russia, through multiple methods, including coordinated accounts, algorithms to increase his presence on the platform and paid promotion.

The documents explain how Georgescut's popularity rose from 1 percent just before the race to 22 percent, through an extensive manipulation operation that involved influencers and deceived Romanian institutions as well as ordinary voters.

US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said that, although the United States does not interfere in the Romanian people's election or the electoral process, Washington is "concerned by the CSAT report about Russian involvement in malicious cyber activities aimed at affected the integrity of Romania's electoral process".

Miller said Romania is a strong NATO ally and the United States values ??its contributions to the alliance's security, and that the country's hard-won position in the transatlantic community cannot be changed "by foreign actors seeking to distance Romania's foreign policy from its Western alliances".

Such a policy shift would have "serious negative consequences for US-Romanian security cooperation," Miller said.

The declassified documents show that TikTok influencers were recruited to promote Georgescu, both directly by publicly endorsing him and indirectly through neutral messages containing hashtags associated with him.

Dozens of TikTok accounts were discovered falsely using the intelligence service's logo and the title Anti-Terrorism Brigade (BAT), each with thousands of followers and over 100,000 likes.

Romanian intelligence services hinted that large sums of money were spent on this operation. Georgescu has declared before the Romanian electoral authorities that he has not spent anything on his campaign.

The intelligence service linked the operation to Russia, noting that access data for Romania's official election websites were published on Russian cybercrime platforms. The access data was likely obtained by targeting legitimate users or exploiting the legitimate training server, the intelligence service said.

Russia has denied any interference in the Romanian elections.

The State Department statement said that Washington has been "closely following the elections in Romania" and that "we will continue to work together with the Romanian authorities to preserve the security of our nations and the well-being of our citizens".