Risky Bulletin Newsletter
December 06, 2024
Risky Biz News: Declassified documents reveal Russia's election info-ops in Romania
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News Editor
Romania's national security council (CSAT) has declassified two documents this week that reveal a coordinated propaganda campaign that boosted an obscure far-right and pro-Kremlin candidate into the country's first round of presidential elections.
The campaign, which mostly took place via TikTok, took Calin Georgescu from an unknown candidate who was only polling around 1% a month before the election to the winner of the first presidential election round, where he accounted for almost a quarter of all votes.
The documents did not formally attribute the operation, but in a subsequent statement this week, the US State Department said what every Romanian politician and regular citizen already said and knew—that this was Russia.