The authorities in Bucharest had annulled the first round and removed the winning candidate
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has described Romania’s recent presidential election as “strange,” with the declared winner securing victory in the absence of the frontrunner.
On Sunday, pro-EU candidate Nicusor Dan defeated Euroskeptic George Simion in a runoff, securing the Romanian presidency by a single-digit margin.
The election rerun was ordered after Romania’s Constitutional Court annulled the results of the November vote, in which independent candidate Calin Georgescu, an EU and NATO critic, finished first with 23%. The authorities cited “irregularities” in his campaign, along with intelligence reports alleging Russian interference – claims which Moscow has denied.
Speaking to reporters on Monday, Peskov called the election “at the very least, strange,” noting that the candidate with the strongest chances had been “forcibly” removed from the race “without much effort to provide justification.”
“But in the absence of such a frontrunner, the winner is who the winner is. This is the reality we are dealing with,” he added.
Asked about claims by Telegram founder Pavel Durov that the authorities from an EU country asked him to “silence conservatives in Romania” ahead of the election, Peskov stated that the EU has a long history of meddling in the internal affairs of other states.
“The fact that European countries such as France, the United Kingdom, and Germany interfere in the internal affairs of other states is nothing new,” he said. “These are merely fragments that occasionally come to light. Believe me, there are certainly far more cases than we are aware of.”
Durov said on Sunday that he had refused a request from a Western European government to remove Romanian Telegram channels ahead of the country’s presidential runoff, arguing that “you can’t ‘fight election interference’ by interfering with elections.”
The French authorities later acknowledged that they were the target of the accusation, but denied making the request. In a subsequent post, the Russian-born tech entrepreneur named Nicolas Lerner, the head of France’s domestic intelligence agency (DGSI), as the official who approached him.
Following the runoff, the Romanian Foreign Ministry accused Russia of interfering in the election, although it offered no evidence to support the claim.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova dismissed the accusation, saying the Romanian election could hardly be described as such, and urged Bucharest not to soil foreign nations with its “electoral mess.”