Romania blames Russia for election meddling

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free

Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.

Romania’s National Security Council has declassified documents detailing what it described as a co-ordinated campaign by Russia to the benefit of pro-Putin presidential frontrunner Călin Georgescu.

“Romania is a target for aggressive Russian hybrid actions, including cyber attacks and information leaks and sabotage,” the council said on Wednesday, days before a run-off vote in which the far right candidate is leading, according to opinion polls.

According to one of the documents prepared by Romania’s secret services (SRI), “cyber crime platforms of Russian origin” had obtained login information for Romania’s election network in the run-up to the first round of presidential elections, which was topped by Georgescu — a previously fringe candidate.

The SRI said more than 85,000 cyber attacks aimed at gaining “access to data from IT systems, altering their integrity, changing the content presented to the general public and making the infrastructure unavailable” had been identified.

“The mode of operation, as well as the scale of the cyber campaign, lead to the conclusion that the attacker has considerable resources,” SRI said. It added that the attackers had routed their activity through computer systems from more than 33 countries and used advanced anonymisation methods.

The declassified documents also detailed how Georgescu’s campaign benefited from a massive co-ordinated campaign on social media that appeared to have had connections to foreign actors. SRI called it a “very well-organised promotion campaign”. Georgescu has declared zero funds spent in the campaign.

The far-right candidate “benefited from preferential treatment” on TikTok because the Chinese social media platform did not label his videos as political ads. Romanian authorities also identified “Telegram and Discord channels where it was discussed how to co-ordinate and avoid being blocked on the platform”, concluding that such a campaign could only have been carried out by a foreign power.

The Kremlin did not immediately comment on the declassified documents, but has previously denied any election meddling in Romania.

Russian President Vladimir Putin this week also mocked the country’s decision to recount the ballots cast in the first presidential round, given that the final tally confirmed Georgescu’s lead. “Authorities didn’t like one candidate so they decided a vote recount,” he said Monday.

Pro-Georgescu videos were pushed out in “swarms” on TikTok, the declassified documents show. The platform, which is owned by ByteDance, said on Tuesday that it took down a “cluster” of accounts that were promoting Georgescu without labelling it as political advertising. The company admitted having deplatformed those users only last week, after the first presidential round.

TikTok collected at least $381,000 dollars in payments for the campaign, the Romanian reports said, adding that the company had admitted to receiving those revenues.

TikTok and Georgescu have denied wrongdoing in the past. The company was not immediately available to comment. Georgescu’s team did not reply to requests seeking comment.