Romania uncovers TikTok campaign organised by ‘state actor’ for pro-Putin candidate

Russia is suspected of conducting an aggressive TikTok propaganda campaign in Romania that helped a pro-Kremlin candidate come from nowhere to win the first round of voting in last month’s presidential election.

Declassified intelligence documents released on Wednesday showed Calin Georgescu’s surge in popularity was due to a “highly organised” and “guerrilla” messaging strategy coordinated by a “state actor”.

The papers included an assessment that Russia was carrying out “hybrid attacks” on Romania.

Mr Georgescu, a staunch critic of Nato, scored a shock win in the first round of the election last month with 22.9 per cent of the vote. He will face a centre-Right reformist in the final round of the election on Dec 8.

On Thursday, he told the BBC he would end all aid to Ukraine if he was elected and brushed off the allegations against his campaign as fearmongering.

It came as the EU ordered TikTok to freeze data linked to the Romanian election, using powers under the bloc’s wide-sweeping Digital Services Act.

The European Parliament had summoned the company’s chief executive last Tuesday to answer questions relating to its activities during the Romanian election.

The platform denied interfering in the election and said it had dismantled 66,000 fake accounts and banned 10 million fake followers.

But in interviews with Romanian authorities released on Wednesday, TikTok admitted that a Romanian citizen called Bogdan Peșchir donated €1 million (£829,185) to promote Mr Georgescu.

Of the sum, €360,000 was paid to other TikTok users to push pro-Georgescu content, a violation of both electoral law and the company’s policies.

Some Romanian TikTok influencers have admitted to receiving payments for promoting Georgescu-related hashtags, such as #Presidency2024.

Marius Catlain, who has more than 800,000 followers, said he was paid based on follower count through an app called Fame Up.

Mr Georgescu declared that his campaign had spent no money at all and was run entirely by volunteers.

On Thursday, he brushed the evidence of illegal donations for his campaign away in an interview with the BBC.

“They are afraid,” he said, while denying he was “Moscow’s man”.

He praised Vladimir Putin as a “patriot and a leader” but added “I am not a fan”.

When asked if he would continue sending aid to Ukraine, he said: “Everything stops. I have to take care just about my people. We have a lot of problems ourselves.”

Romanian officials on Thursday reported over 85,000 cyberattacks targeting the electoral process, calling the situation an example of “aggressive Russian hybrid actions”.

“The attacks continued intensively, including on election day and the night after elections,” said one of the declassified documents from Romania’s national security council.

These attacks were considered “sophisticated” using the latest “anonymisation” technology and coordinated from 33 countries.

“The operating mode and the amplitude of the campaign leads us to conclude the attacker has considerable resources specific to an attacking state,” said the Romanian declassified documents.

As attention centres on Mr Georgescu’s potential links to Russia, a 2016 article in Russian media resurfaced that claimed Mr Georgescu would be the future prime minister of Romania.

An investigation by journalists at Context, a Romanian news site, also traced Mr Georgescu’s online support to Russia-linked accounts that spread anti-Western messages and pro-Russian narratives across various social media platforms including TikTok, X, Telegram and Facebook.

Adding to the speculation, prominent Russian ideologue Alexander Dugin declared that “Romania will be part of Russia soon” on X earlier this week. He later deleted the post.

Mr Georgescu has backed conspiracy theories on his social media accounts, such as denying the moon landings.

He has also made ultra-traditional comments about women, on one occasion saying that caesarean sections “break the divine thread” between mother and child.

Romanian politicians usually at odds with one another have formed coalitions in response to the threat from what they see as Russian interference.

The Social Democratic Party (PSD) led by Romania’s current prime minister Marcel Ciolacu has thrown its support behind Eleana Lasconi, who is standing for the centre-Right Save Romania Union (USR).

The PSD’s backing of Ms Lasconi significantly bolsters her chances of defeating Mr Georgescu in Sunday’s final election round.