By Claudia Bădulescu, Free University of Brussels, Institute of European Studies.

Eighteen years after joining the European Union, Romania has shown, again, why its place is inside the European family. On 18 May the independent, pro-European mathematician-turned-mayor Nicușor Dan defeated George Simion, the leader of the far-right Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR), overturning a 20-point first-round gap and ending months of breath-holding across the continent. This morning, 22 May, Romania’s Constitutional Court met in solemn session and unanimously confirmed Nicușor Dan’s victory, formally declaring him the country’s new president. With a final tally of 6,168,642 votes (53.60 %) to George Simion’s 5,339,053 (46.40 %), the Court’s validation brings the presidential contest to an unambiguous close and opens the next chapter of Romania’s democracy. And yet, before the champagne has even gone flat, Moscow’s echo-chambers are buzzing with fury, fake news and fresh conspiracies, as Russia’s hybrid war for destabilising Romania – and Central and Eastern Europe – still rages.

From November’s Annulment to May’s Miracle

To understand why this election felt existential, rewind six months. In November 2024 Romania’s first presidential round was annulled after security services traced a storm of coordinated disinformation, troll-farm amplification and opaque financing back to actors linked to the Kremlin. The decision removed the far-right influencer Călin Georgescu from the race and plunged the country into a constitutional crisis. Simion – already building a TikTok empire of grievance, orthodoxy and “Romania first” – MAGA-like slogans – presented himself as Georgescu’s political heir. On 4 May, in the rescheduled first round, Simion captured more than 40% of the vote, while Dan scraped into the run-off with barely 21%. Many analysts were convinced Dan faced a mission-impossible: in just two weeks he would have to erase a 20% difference – representing roughly 1.8-million-vote deficit left over from the first round.

But the live Euronews debate on 8 May – just hours before Europe Day – flipped the momentum. That evening Dan faced Simion in a four-hour debate that became viral proof-of-concept for patience, policy and factual politics. Women, urban voters, minorities and, critically, older Romanians who remember both Ceaușescu and Soviet tanks, began to swing in favour of Dan. Mass civic mobilisation rewrote the script on 18 May: participation vaulted from 53% in the first round to a shade above 64% in the runoff – a historic record – as people showed up determined to block the extremist and steer Romania back to the European mainstream.

Kremlin Rage, Telegram Whispers

The victory did not go down quietly in Moscow. Within hours, Russia’s foreign-ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova sneered that the 18 May ballot ‘can hardly be called an election’. Kremlin press-secretary Dmitri Peskov deemed the result “at least curious”, adding that ‘the candidate with the best chance of winning was simply forced out of the race – no attempt was even made to justify it. Putin-ally Aleksandr Dugin fumed that ‘President Macron openly intervened in Romania’s vote’ and urged Europeans to stage a revolution against what he called the EU’s ‘liberal dictatorship’. Even Telegram founder Pavel Durov chimed in, alleging French intelligence had pressured him to “silence” pro-Simion channels – an easy claim to toss into an online ecosystem primed to equate content moderation with tyranny.

These narratives were not organic. Romanian fact-checkers counted thousands of near-identical posts and AI-generated videos in the 48 hours after polls closed: claims of artificially stuffed ballot boxes, of “French agents” infiltrated Romania, doctored screenshots or videos purporting to show Dan at Masonic or Jewish events. Facebook groups that had simmered for months on vaccine hoaxes suddenly re-branded into election-denial hubs. AUR activists amplified them, then cited the resulting frenzy in their Constitutional Court complaint asking for the annulment of the presidential elections – one the Court tossed as legally void this morning. The episode fits the classic Russian military intelligence (GRU) disruptive operations playbook: deny, disorient, disrupt, amplify, repeat.

Why does the Kremlin care so much about a mid-size EU state that spends under 2 % of GDP on defense? Geography and symbolism. Romania sits on NATO’s eastern flank, shares the Black Sea with Russia and acts as Kyiv’s most reliable logistical back door. Toppling an EU-minded president, or merely paralyzing him, would reverberate from Chişinău to Warsaw, and beyond. Disrupting elections also inoculates Moscow’s domestic audience against democratic ideas: see, they’re all rigged anyway.

The May operation in Romania failed, but two hard truths remain: the social-media battlespace is still porous to disinformation, and economic frustration is still pervasive. Exit-poll data show that voters with vocational education, residents of poorer counties and many men aged 31-60 went overwhelmingly for Simion. They did so not because they crave a Slavic protectorate, but because salaries lag behind EU averages and clinics crumble while elites argue over procurement codes. Populism will continue to harvest that anger unless policies for improving infrastructure, education, health services, and rule-of-law enforcement meet it head-on.

A Five-Point Campaign for the Long War

Winning one election is not a vaccine; it is a breathing space. Five fronts matter now:

• Harden the information space. Romania must implement full DSA enforcement: rapid takedown mechanisms, transparent political-ad libraries, fines that sting. Brussels should help Romania to implement EU-sponsored digital-literacy drives aimed at rural voters and diaspora groups alike.

• Follow the money and the message.  The National Integrity Agency should not stop at identifying who wired the three-million-euro splash into Realitatea TV or bankrolled the avalanche of AUR’s campaign letters.  It must also audit how those funds were spent: on bot farms, TikTok micro-influencers, and prime-time “analysts” who recycle Kremlin talking-points about NATO, anticorruption and the war in Ukraine. Democracy can tolerate and overcome ugly speech; it cannot survive a covert business model that monetises disinformation.

• Deliver visible projects. Dan’s technocratic reputation buys him a hundred-day ‘honeymoon’. He must deploy EU Cohesion funds for county-hospital upgrades, digital cadasters and pothole-free national roads – projects that people can touch before the 2026 local elections.

• Re-engage the diaspora constructively. Nearly 55% of Romanians voting abroad chose Simion, most of them being based in Western European countries. Many feel abandoned by consulates, gouged by fees and mocked by mainland media. An honest outreach strategy – through more dialogue and opportunities to return to Romania – can chip away at resentment.

• Maintain the civic coalition. NGOs, liberal parties, ethnic-minority associations and business federations that rallied for Dan must stay networked, not dissolve into familiar micro-feuds. The next test could be parliamentary elections or a disinformation spike over Ukraine. Preparedness beats improvisation.

Europe Day, Every Day

These presidential elections framed the choice starkly: either in favour of Romania’s European integration as a liberal democracy, or a mirage of Ro-exit meant to install a sort of “sovereignty” scripted in Moscow. Romanian voters chose Europe and democracy – again. Yet Russia’s power in the region has never relied on majority support; it thrives on confusion, exhaustion and on a populist bloc ready to chant Russian propaganda. Battling these tendencies is a marathon, not a sprint. The good news is that a civic immune system clearly exists, and Romania’s democracy works better than ever. It mobilized 11 million Romanians to elect between a math prodigy and a TikTok populist. They made the right choice. Now the task is to keep that immune system healthy and safe. Just because we won the battle of 18 May, it does not mean that Russia’s hybrid war came to an end. Nicușor Dan’s win was a sharp defeat for Moscow, but new disinformation waves are already forming. We must fight every day – on every screen and in every conversation – to keep Romania, and the region, anchored in an open, democratic and rules-based Europe. Democracy survives not through one heroic Sunday, but through millions of small acts of attention every day. We need to stay vigilant, sceptical, yet engaged. Miracles do happen, but they take time, patience, and sustained effort.  

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Claudia Bădulescu is a post-doctoral researcher at the Free University of Brussels (ULB), linked to the Institute of European Studies (IEE). Her research explores the administrative reforms and the democratic consolidation in Central and Eastern Europe since 1989. She also works on the european integration process.