French Tango in Bucharest
The French diplomacy and RFI Romania pas de deux continues in the wake of Western interference in 2024. A look back at the story of an electoral manipulation.
How many more pirouettes will the journalists of Radio France Internationale (RFI) Romania and French diplomatic personnel have to perform to try to save face after French and Western interference in Romanian internal affairs? In light of the latest interview of the French ambassador to Romania by the editor-in-chief of RFI Romania, the answer seems to be: as long as it pleases the prince...
In just a few minutes, probably feeling confident and assured of having no contradictors, French ambassador Nicolas Warnery managed to assert that President Iohannis had very clearly attributed the alleged foreign interference during the first round of the 2024 Romanian presidential elections to Russia, then declared that the French Viginum report had demonstrated this interference, and finally explained that criticisms against the so-called French "colonialism" in Romania were the work of Russian propaganda.
Iohannis's Confession in Brussels
"And then there was a support [from France], explicit support when the [Romanian] President of the Republic, on January 6th, said 'it's a Russian hybrid attack.' He clearly attributed the origin of the hybrid attack to Russia," Ambassador Warnery asserted. Problem: this is completely false.
When questioned by a Romanian journalist about the attribution of interference, Klaus Iohannis had actually declared the opposite in December:
We know what happened, but it is extremely complicated, according to diplomatic procedures, to point the finger and say "you did this." What you're asking me, in fact, is whether there is an attribution procedure, that's what it's called. In cyberspace and for malicious actions, attribution is very complicated because it can only be done if you have concrete and indubitable proof. In cyberspace, it's complicated to have something indubitable. There was a procedure where a cyberattack was attributed to a state and the investigation for this attribution lasted four years.
In other words: no tangible proof, and no attribution, to use the technical term...
This certainly didn't prevent Iohannis from continuing thus:
Based on how they acted, based on how the action of attacks on TikTok unfolded, TikTok accounts from Russia, simultaneous attack on all servers that were involved in vote counting, attacks that were repelled. These multiple actions cannot be executed by individual actors, groups, or parties. They have such scope and complexity that only a state actor can do such a thing. In the field of intelligence services, these models are very well known and we know who acts this way, and here it was Russia.
We remain far from the "clear attribution" claimed by the French ambassador, and the analogy approach already jumps out from December.
Analogy as Proof
When attribution becomes impossible, resemblance is invoked. Yet astroturfing - this technique of manipulating trends on social networks - is regularly used by private actors.
Above all, the persistence of the "analogical" approach reveals, seven months later, the weakness of the argument. During the Defense Council of July 2025, Romanian authorities were at exactly the same point: "We are sure, by analogy, that it was Russia, but we have no proof," as reported by HotNews on July 14th - the very day the French ambassador performed his first pirouette on RFI Romania's airwaves.
The Romanian press also reports that according to Defense Council participants, it would require "an extended operation that could last several years." At this stage, we are just asked to take at face value the only beneficiaries of the 2024-2025 electoral psychodrama: the parties that have confiscated the Romanian transition for thirty-five years and their European allies, and managed to stay in power after canceling a regular election whose result didn't suit them.
Viginum and Its Hollow, Circular References
Having delivered the first lie without contradiction, the ambassador gets carried away: "Then there was the Viginum report, which was the analysis by competent French services before the Prime Minister of what had happened, with the help, of course, of Romanian services."
In reality, the Viginum report is just a recycling of Romanian analyses, as indicated on its first page: it is built on public information and data, without any proper investigation.
Particularly interesting, Viginum doesn't mention the National Liberal Party (PNL) campaign to boost Georgescu (the candidate excluded from the presidential election), yet identified by Romanian tax authorities, who traced payments made to influencers, as revealed by the press.
This is nevertheless a striking fact. The National Liberal Party, which is former President Iohannis's party, amplified Georgescu's campaign; Georgescu's success is such that the election must be canceled, under the pretext of foreign interference; Iohannis thus manages to stay in power beyond his mandate, then resigns under threat of impeachment proceedings, to make way for an interim president who is a PNL member, Ilie Bolojan, who will become the Prime Minister of the new president Nicușor Dan after the second presidential election in 2025.
Is it too much to expect from Viginum to mention the role of establishment parties in the TikTok campaign in favor of Georgescu? Should we also understand that the means of the French State must, above all, serve the interests of Macron's political group in the European Parliament for a while longer? In any case, the solidification of the hijacking of the Romanian election by the "system parties" continues with the blessing of French diplomacy.
Two Theories on the Origin of the Georgescu Vote
Back to the sovereignist vote and Georgescu's success in the first round, two realistic theories that don't rely on pseudo-demonstrations by analogy prevail.
Theory #1: The Manipulation Operation That Went Wrong
A first reading suggests we're dealing with a manipulation campaign that exploded mid-flight. The initial interest of system parties was to bring down George Simion, the Alliance for Romanian Unity (AUR) candidate who threatened their hegemony. By discreetly pushing Georgescu's campaign, they hoped to fragment the sovereignist vote and ensure the presence of "system" representatives in the second round. The operation would have gone off the rails: instead of getting 8-10%, Georgescu came first with over 20%, threatening to win the election (a poll gave him 60% of voting intentions when the Constitutional Court decided to suspend, on Friday December 6, 2024, the vote that had already begun within the Romanian diaspora). The sorcerer's apprentices then panicked and decided to purely and simply cancel the electoral process.
Subversion is like a nuclear reactor: if you don't keep it at a subcritical level, it blows up in your face.
Theory #2: The Turnaround of the Sovereignist Vote
The second hypothesis, not exclusive of the first, relates to the turnaround of part of the sovereignist vote from Simion to Georgescu, due to a massive disinformation campaign against the AUR leader.
Unlike the virtual campaigns of most parties, AUR had conducted a long grassroots campaign: markets, distribution of books and posters, handshakes and selfies galore. They had even organized a medical caravan circulating in Romanian medical deserts, offering dental care, cancer screenings, and various consultations – all funded by their public party subsidies, which the Party had announced they preferred to invest in Romanians' health rather than advertising campaigns.
The anti-Simion media campaign, naturally never "debunked" by fact-checkers, probably diverted part of the electorate toward Georgescu. It included three main components:
Accusation of being a Russian agent, carried for months. Simion is persona non grata in Ukraine for having defended the 500,000 Romanians of Ukraine. Not for his ties with Moscow. The Ukrainians have moreover recognized through an official document sent to the Romanian Prime Minister that Simion could not enter Ukraine because he campaigned for the rights of the Romanian minority in Ukraine, going against Ukrainian interests. Same for Moldova: Simion being a unionist, he wanted reunification and was perceived as an enemy. His visit ban dated from the mandate of a pro-Russian Moldovan president, but no matter! This massive disinformation certainly freed up electoral space that Georgescu captured, perfectly illustrating the boomerang effect of propaganda. Note that the same Ukrainian territory ban affects Kelemen Hunor, the leader of the Hungarian minority in Romania, but since he is the ally of the Romanian executive, nobody talks about it.
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