Nicolas Cinquini

Since the annulment of the 2024 election, Romania’s rule of law keeps crumbling. Here comes Getica – a paramilitary unit who puts EU and US citizens on a Fifth Column list and jokes about war crimes

Romania annulled its presidential election in December 2024 amid allegations of Russian interference. Eighteen months later, Romanian authorities still have not publicly produced evidence showing that Russian influence determined the result.

Yet, those who challenge that narrative increasingly find themselves labeled as pro-Russian, fact-checked, publicly denounced, censored, or added to the “Fifth Column” blacklist of Romanian Battlegroup Getica, an armed group linked to Ukrainian military structures.

The story of how I ended up on that blacklist reveals something larger than a single paramilitary database. It points to an ecosystem of media outlets, NGOs, activists, fact-checkers, and an armed group that appears to use accusations of Russian influence to stigmatize political opponents and critics of Romania’s (and the EU’s) official electoral narrative.

The question is not only why journalists, politicians, academics, and activists end up on Getica’s Fifth Column database, but most importantly why Romanian and Ukrainian authorities continue to tolerate an armed group threatening civilians while nobody accepts responsibility for it.

Getica’s “Fifth Column” database has grown far beyond Romanian politics. At some point, Donald Trump was on it. Steve Bannon is still on it. Republicans for National Renewal and its leader Mark Ivanyo were recently added — alongside European politicians and journalists. Including myself.

To some targets, Getica confirmed modeling their “Fifth Column” list on Ukraine’s infamous Myrotvorets death list. Those armed men wearing military uniform with Ukrainian and Romanian flags and, for some of them, on Ukraine’s army’s payroll, have joked about war crimes, war time rape, doxxed a civilian, constantly lied on their nature, and, last but not least, kept emitting threat no later than this week

In 2024, Getica’s Fifth column’s manifesto declared possible terrorist action if Ukraine loses the war.

Protected Speech or Military Misconduct?

I had been monitoring the Fifth Column site for a while when I appeared on the list. The move was an anticipated one after recurring signaling from Newsweek Romania trying to frame me as being aligned with Russia — despite not having posted anything in support of Russia. It came first as the logical conclusion of a pattern of smear and harassment coming from people connected to Newsweek România, Alianța — a US 501(c)(3) meddling with Romanian politics — and the local businessman Marius Bostan, who consolidated his fortune on state contracts awarded during the COVID crisis.

But then came the questions — is it a real thing? Is it dangerous? Unfortunately, it is. Especially in the context of a country whose rule of law was buried altogether with the 2024 election.

I contacted Getica to receive an explanation and clarify the label of “enemy of Romania”. An anonymous representative replied that nobody had ever suffered consequences from inclusion and argued that the project merely exercised free speech. They also explained that they used to be affiliated with Ukrainian military intelligence, but are now under the authority of the Ukrainian Armed Forces… Further investigation would reveal how blurred are the lines under which Getica operates.

The answer regarding free speech raises an obvious problem. You can’t claim free speech protection while operating as a military organization targeting civilians. If they’re civilians, Getica’s members enjoy broad free-speech protections — that is, up to the point where speech crosses into incitement or creates immediate, real-world threats. In that case, law enforcement and civilian justice should handle them. If they’re military, the problem is different. Military organizations operate under rules of engagement. They don’t target civilians. They don’t maintain independent blacklists of enemies. They answer to a chain of command. If they’re out-of-control military members, they should answer before a military tribunal.

Getica claims both at once: military affiliation when it suits them (Ukrainian unit emblems on the website, Ukrainian battlegroup membership, fundraising for its activities), and civilian free speech protection when confronted with responsibility for the Fifth Column database. Right after I sent them a series of questions on the way they were assessing people to put them on their “Fifth Column” list, they blocked me on Facebook although I didn’t even ever tag them nor publish anything on them yet. The honor and ethics of military service were traded for the methods of petty mobsters.

But the question goes beyond the activities of Getica. If Ukraine is supporting these activities, then it is crossing another line, in a context already extremely loaded due to the recent attribution of the Nord Stream sabotage to a Ukrainian agent by a German tribunal — the worst attack on a NATO country infrastructure so far has been performed by somebody affiliated with the Ukrainian military. The atmosphere is even more loaded since a Ukrainian drone recently exploded in the Romanian port of Constanta — the biggest NATO port on the Black Sea — a few hundred meters away from the oil terminals and from an ammonium nitrate deposit, a chemical product that made major damages in the port of Beirut in 2020. With Getica, the question of Ukraine’s willingness to target Western civilians and western infrastructure is all the more acute. You can’t receive Western support and attack the West. You can’t claim funding for your military and pay the members of Getica as they target EU and US civilians. If Ukraine can’t court-martial those targeting EU and US citizens, if it covers for them, then the whole story of defending a democracy against an autocracy crumbles and, with it, part of the reasons to support Ukraine against the Russian invasion.

Getica — illegal, dangerous and… aligned with Macron?

In Romania, paramilitary organizations operating outside state command are constitutionally prohibited. Yet, Romanian Battlegroup Getica appears to operate openly: armed men claiming ties to Ukrainian military structures, running a blacklist of civilians, and even claiming to have conducted two operations on Romanian soil.

Its historical founder and commander, Sergiu Meșeșan, claims participation in dozens of combat missions in Ukraine. Its members and supporters have doxed critics and targeted family members. Meșeșan recently returned to Romania to teach people how to use FPV drones, including arming them with explosives. In public exchanges, the group has joked about war crimes, rape, disappearances, and other conduct that would normally trigger serious scrutiny.

In one live exchange on X, the Romanian Legion Getica account replied to another user with language trivializing rape and invoking Azov: “Several army groups participated in your creation, Azov too I think. The woman didn’t complain.” The reference is not incidental. Azov’s neo-Nazi origins were documented to the point that the US Congress prohibited weapons transfers to the unit in 2018, a restriction that remained in place until 2024. During that period, Radu Hossu — Getica’s main fundraiser and co-founder — appeared in a June 2023 interview wearing an Azov emblem containing the Wolfsangel, a symbol with direct Nazi lineage. In one of his own fundraising reports, he also acknowledged purchasing equipment for two military personnel enrolled in Azov, adding parenthetically: “yes, that AZOV”

The point is not guilt by association. It is that an armed group maintaining a civilian blacklist, joking about rape and war crimes, invoking disappearances, and displaying proximity to military formations controversial enough to trigger years of congressional restrictions should have attracted institutional scrutiny long before journalists, politicians, and foreign citizens began appearing on its list.

Whose Army?

Some Getica members hold Ukrainian military ID cards and receive Ukrainian Army salaries

According to representatives of the group contacted directly for this investigation, Getica has operated under Ukrainian military command — initially under GUR, the Ukrainian military intelligence directorate, and later under ZSU, the Ukrainian Armed Forces. When pressed on the specifics of their affiliation, they directed us to their website.

That website has been telling its own story. Until May 30, 2026, it displayed the emblem of the 4th Heavy Mechanized Brigade of the Ukrainian Army

On that date — shortly after this investigation began sending right-of-reply letters to Romanian and Ukrainian institutions — the emblem was quietly removed, with an announcement that a new unit affiliation would be revealed. Days later, two new emblems appeared: that of the 1230th Separate Engineering and Technical Support Battalion, part of the 48th Engineering Brigade of the Ukrainian Support Forces; and that of the International Legion of Defense Intelligence of Ukraine, MUNA 3449 — a separate unit of foreign fighters subordinated to the Main Directorate of Intelligence of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, which is the GUR

No Ukrainian institution has formally claimed oversight of the group. No Romanian institution has either.

The people behind Getica form an unusual partnership. On one side, Sergiu Meșeșan, the group’s historical founder and commander, is a Romanian volunteer fighter in Ukraine who was previously sentenced in Sweden to three years in prison for aggravated fraud as the leader of a bank-card-skimming and phishing operation active across Sweden, Finland, and Denmark.

On the other is Radu Hossu, a self-described founding father of the project: a prominent pro-Ukraine activist, fundraiser, and politician from USR — the party created by Romania’s current president and aligned with Macron’s Renew Europe group — as well as an “embedded” war journalist, covering military operations and units he simultaneously helped finance.

One man built and commanded the organization, and would publish the manifesto of the Fifth Column blacklist and maintain it. The other provided funding, public legitimacy, media access, and political connections.

Questions about Getica’s financing had already produced one of the earliest public conflicts surrounding the group. IT specialist Sebastian Dracopol, later added to the Fifth Column database himself, challenged the use of funds raised by Hossu through a personal Revolut account. After being doxxed and threatened, Dracopol sued Hossu. Although he did not obtain a restraining order, the proceedings produced one of the few official records concerning Getica, including admissions regarding Hossu’s fundraising role, his creation and ownership of the group’s Telegram channel, and the armed nature of the combatants operating under the Getica banner. We will return to that case later.

The April 2024 “Fifth Column” Manifesto

In April 2024, Getica commander Sergiu Meșeșan published what amounts to the founding document of the Fifth Column project, laying out his program in explicit terms:

We believe it is normal to have different opinions and freedom of expression. That is what democracy is about. But we wish to warn, through this message, that there is a limit to the subversive activities we will tolerate — I am referring to ‘Getica’ — on the territory of Romania or the Republic of Moldova.

And we are EXTREMELY ready to act from the shadows to limit the impact of Russian influence in both states.

Thus, when Ukraine collapses — as this category of Russophiles maintains, and if it should actually come to pass — we will be ready to strike with an intensity and firepower the likes of which Romania has never seen, in order to defend the national and vital interests of the nation.

We are aware that there is a legal framework that is not exactly favorable for state defense institutions to act freely and effectively. Laws change, however, and for the homeland, ‘Getica’ is ready even to circumvent them. We own that. We might be called terrorists. But the terrorists of some are the freedom fighters of others.

[…] We already have a website, a secure server, and a domain. We will publish them very shortly. Beyond the information and presentation images you have been able to see on our page over time, we wish to put into practice the concept of the #coloana5 database. We firmly believe that exposing the identity of subversive elements and useful idiots will deter them more or less from their activities of sabotaging public opinion, and will spare us other actions — unfortunately far more invasive — in the near future

Meșeșan’s manifesto remains live on Facebook today. He has since returned to Romania.

The idea of an armed group on Ukrainian payroll going rogue and targeting citizens of NATO member states should have warranted a reaction from authorities, at least from Romania and from Ukraine. In response to our inquiry, the Armed Forces of Ukraine stated that the matter fell within the competence of the Main Intelligence Directorate (GUR) of the Defense Ministry. The Romanian Defense Ministry denied any affiliation. No further clarification was provided.

A year after its manifesto, Getica goes… “clandestine”?

In a lengthy statement published on April 14, 2025, Getica founder Sergiu Meșeșan described himself as having conducted 37 combat missions in Ukraine, including infantry, SIGINT, drone ISR, and attack-drone roles. He stated that Getica had approximately 50 members over its existence and never more than 20 active fighters at any given time.

More importantly, he publicly acknowledged that the group had carried out “2 limited surveillance operations on Romanian territory.” Meșeșan did not disclose the targets, legal basis, beneficiaries, or institutional authorization of the two Romanian surveillance operations. No Romanian authority contacted during this investigation acknowledged requesting, supervising, authorizing, or even being aware of them. The statement raises obvious questions about the legality of intelligence-style activities conducted on Romanian territory by individuals presenting themselves as members of a foreign military structure. If they are a paramilitary group, their activities are unconstitutional and illegal in Romania. If they are affiliated to Ukraine’s military, this is a serious breach of the treaties that prevent any such activity. If these missions were happening with the blessing of the Romanian Army, then somebody at the MaPN lied to us and covered up for Getica – and this person should answer before the law too.

In the same statement, Meșeșan proclaimed that: “From today, Getica becomes a multinational, global and clandestine operation.”

By any reasonable definition, Getica does not display the characteristics of a regular military force. Regular military forces operate with rules of engagement, a formal conduct code, and an accountable command hierarchy — constraints that precisely prevent armed groups from targeting civilians, engaging in public discourse, or taking sides in political debate.

Getica’s Fifth Column

Coloana 5 — Fifth Column — is Getica’s blacklist. By May 2024, the page was online. It currently lists over 150 American and European citizens and organizations accused of serving Russian interests, acting as useful idiots, or being enemies of Romania.

Inclusion is not notified in advance. According to the operators themselves, a profile can be spotted automatically by a combination of alleged military AI systems — an OSINT database and an LLM — and then approved by a human operator. The list is not static: operators state they monitor listed individuals and may revise positions over time, an implicit form of pressure to coerce people into alignment. The original version of the site included a “Recommended actions” rubric specifying measures such as localization and monitoring of listed individuals. That section has since been removed. At some point, the site began blocking web archiving tools, making earlier versions inaccessible.

In direct communication with a listed person, Getica leadership referenced Myrotvorets explicitly as a model — the Ukrainian hit list on which was Chilean-American influencer Gonzalo Lira, whose case gained attention in 2023 when Elon Musk publicly questioned his detention. According to Ukrainian officials, Lira died in detention from pneumonia and health complications; his family and supporters alleged mistreatment and torture

A development in sync with the election calendar

Getica’s Fifth Column project did not emerge during an ordinary political period. In 2024, every major elected office was scheduled for renewal in Romania.

In late April, the European Union activated its Rapid Response System to flag content during the European Parliament election campaign, and Getica simultaneously began listing members of the opposition on its website. The framing had been set weeks earlier: on March 6, Ursula von der Leyen, campaigning for her reelection, made the stakes explicit in her Bucharest rally cry:

[..] Putin’s friends are trying to rewrite our history and hijack our future. They are spreading hate from behind their keyboards. And let there be no doubt what’s at stake in this election. Our peaceful and united Europe is being challenged like never before by populists, nationalists, and demagogues. Whether it is the far right or the far left. Whether it is the AfD, the Rassemblement National, the confederatia or Wasraschdene. The names may be different, but the goal is the same: They want to trample on our values, and they want to destroy our Europe. But we, the EPP, will never let that happen

Following the Russiagate playbook, critics and opposition to power are “Russian influence” – this would become a recurring theme during the long Romanian election cycle. Getica’s project, supposedly aimed at exposing Russian influence, would just plainly overlap with domestic political conflicts, opposition figures, journalists, commentators, and critics of power.

The involvement of USR member Radu Hossu makes an obvious case for direct political support or, at least, convenient complacency, with the criminal activities of Getica. Contacted, neither Dominic Fritz – leader of USR – nor USR Brașov provided a statement to distance themselves from Hossu. Bucharest leader of USR, Vlad Voiculescu, replied in a direct message that he didn’t see how the matter was related to USR. Yet, the fact that a USR member helped and covered for a coercion gang is obviously a USR problem. None of the questions sent to USR-founder, and now President Nicusor Dan, to the Ministry of Defence, led by USR member Radu Miruta, nor to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, led by USR member Oana Toiu, delivered a significant assessment, response, let alone an acknowledgement of the gravity of the matter. Silence seems to clearly mean consent, and Getica’s utility for the USR could be summarized like that: if propaganda fails, if censorship and the weaponization of the DSA fails, then an informal tool to threatens or silences people find its full utility.

Who makes it to the list?

The progression from media labeling to blacklisting can be observed directly in my own case. Since December 2024, I have repeatedly described the absurdity of framing as pro-Russian people who — like most of the Romanian conservatives — have condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and hold Russia in distrust for many historical reasons. In a country where 87.5% of the people are West-oriented and consider EU and NATO membership as warranties of security and prosperity, framing a part of the population — the conservatives — as anti-EU, anti-NATO, pro-Russia only serves a propaganda machine.

Before appearing in the Fifth Column database, I had already been repeatedly smeared as pro-Russian, pro-Orbán, pro-Georgescu or part of various influence networks — and this without ever having published pro-Russian, pro-Georgescu or pro-Orbán material. The attacks had far more to do with the reporting I published than with any pro-Russian content.

I have documented how the current implementation of the EU Digital Services Act created a growing ecosystem of censorship actors while leaving user protections largely theoretical (see DSA: Europe’s Injustice System).

Later this year, I contributed to The Managed Ballot, published through MCC Brussels, with a chapter on Romania’s Hybrid Regime and its European Accomplices. It argued that the country’s democratic downgrade was driven by the regime itself — the government and the intelligence community — working hand in hand with a local “fake civil society” that lacked real constituencies and ran on foreign executive-power funding, including the EU’s. Behind it, external interference from Brussels and from Macron. The result: a country the Economist’s Democracy Index had reclassified as a “hybrid regime” — no longer a democracy. The publication of the MCC report triggered an ad hominem attack in a media outlet owned by Marius Bostan.

The combination placed me in direct conflict with actors who considered the Russian-interference narrative settled fact. Beyond my own reporting, I also publish the Romanian edition of Le Monde diplomatique and regularly translate writers who frequently challenge official foreign-policy narratives and oppose censorship, including Serge Halimi, Pierre Rimbert, Matt Taibbi, Aaron Maté, Thomas Fazi, Jeffrey Sachs and John Mearsheimer.

A few days ago, another Newsweek Romania “embedded journalist” — mixing coverage of the Ukraine war with support for Ukraine —, Remus Cernea, alleged that Sachs and Mearsheimer were “Putin’s intellectuals”.

Newsweek România, Alianța and the Bostan ecosystem

But things accelerated when I debunked a hit piece published by Newsweek România targeting Georgică Severin, one of the few members of the National Audiovisual Council (CNA) consistently opposing censorship measures within Romania’s media regulator. My article also noted how the advertorial section of Newsweek România only contained representatives of the government. Before publishing my rebuttal, I sent detailed questions to Newsweek România. No answer was received. Two days later, Newsweek România published a new article targeting both Severin and me. Another article followed in Newsweek, reminding readers of my positive reaction to AUR’s medical caravan project and the fact that my wife is an AUR member.

Facing calls for deportation, I debunked the most outrageous allegations in a single published response, rather than engaging every online harasser.

Shortly afterwards, I appeared on Getica’s Fifth Column database, directly tagged as an “enemy of Romania” and a “potential collaborator.” Getica’s file referenced articles published by two media outlets in which a key stakeholder is Marius Bostan — În Linie Dreaptă and Newsweek România (a local licensee, not the US edition, with full editorial autonomy). Bostan is a former Romanian Telecommunications Minister from the “technocratic government” that governed Romania from 2015 to 2017, formed after the Colectiv nightclub fire protests. Later, Bostan largely benefited from government contracts during the COVID crisis. In 2018, Newsweek România was launched, at an event where the head of the Romanian Intelligence Service would participate. Bostan exerts further influence via Alianța, a US 501(c) originally created to nurture US-Romania friendship, gathering former US ambassadors on its board. Through Newsweek România and Alianța-related actors, a common pattern emerges: individuals challenging dominant narratives are first publicly framed as vectors of disinformation before some eventually find themselves referenced by Getica’s Fifth Column project.

In one instance, the Getica Twitter account even asked the editor of În Linie Dreaptă when to add an academic to the list — which raises the question of direct management of the Getica list by Bostan’s employees.

On July 22, 2025, Getica publicly justified AUR MEP Gheorghe Piperea’s inclusion by posting a screenshot of a Digi24 article reporting that the European Commission considered his motion of censure against Ursula von der Leyen to be linked to Moscow’s interests. Getica’s accompanying comment was: “connecting the dots 😉” A normal parliamentary procedure — a motion of censure, one of the European Parliament’s standard checks-and-balances instruments — had already been reframed by Newsweek România as an initiative of the “Russophile extremist AUR party” before Getica treated it as a Russian-interference signal.

Getica’s list has kept growing since its launch. In April 2025, Donald Trump was added. He was removed shortly after — no removal date confirmed.

Months later, the operators claimed it had been a test to confuse enemies. That explanation is difficult to take at face value: it is more plausible that internal pushback warned them of the risk of directly targeting a sitting US president. What followed makes the Trump removal look less like a policy and more like damage control — the additions continued. The targeting pattern is hard to separate from the political positioning of Getica’s main fundraiser, Radu Hossu, and his party USR, which has maintained a radically conflicting stance toward Donald Trump, the MAGA movement, and USR’s local rivals, the AUR party.

The same chronology appears around Republicans for National Renewal. In early 2026, Newsweek România published an article about a distinction awarded by the American organization to AUR’s leader George Simion. Shortly afterwards, RNR leader Mark Ivanyo was added to the Fifth Column database together with the organization itself. Dragoș Moldoveanu, an AUR member, was added in the same batch, and a Bulgarian figure associated with the same political ecosystem was also added. More additions followed after public discussions involving AUR MP Mihai Neamțu and sovereignty-oriented commentators, including Laurențiu Țîrcă.

Țîrcă received some of the most radical messaging from Getica. The group confirmed to him that Myrotvorets was its model, and pointed to how people on such lists suffer “accidental” deaths. Țîrcă reported seeing a now-removed image of his name written on a rocket launcher. When he challenged Getica over alleged war crimes committed during the Kursk incursion, where elderly civilians died, the Getica account replied: “I don’t deal with pensioners only, I deal with students too.” Țîrcă was a student at that time.

Although Newsweek România carries the name of the American weekly, asked about editorial oversight and accountability, Newsweek USA told us that its international publishing partners are responsible for their own editorial operations and content, while also stating that Newsweek expects organizations operating under its brand to uphold responsible journalism standards.

The concentration of impostors at the local edition of Newsweek goes so far that it receives contribution from Ovidiu Nahoiu, Chief Editor of Radio France International Romania, who shone a year ago with an obsequious interview of the French Ambassador — that is the representative of the government that pays Nahoiu’s salary — were 3 blatant lies went uncheck on air in order to support the Russian influence narrative justifying the annulment of the election. Newsweek also hosts editorial from Adrian Zuckerman — a former ambassador who constantly meddles with Romanian politics, sometimes to praise the Ministry of Internal Affairs for his role in the 2024 coup – naturally framed as “saving Romania”-, sometimes to urge the Romanian Presidency not to join Trump board of Peace.

A few years ago, a reporting by Recorder had already highlited one of the key reason explaining the journalistic fraud within Newsweek and a large part of the press — government money flooding them.

“The destruction of these emitters of toxic ideas must be part of the response.”

The overlap with Getica’s rhetoric extends beyond Newsweek itself. One recurring node is Alianța, a network whose members and participants have included business leaders, activists, former diplomats, former American ambassadors, media figures and public officials. On September 20, 2025, Alianța member Andrei Caramitru publicly defended Getica and its blacklist, describing Getica as Romanian patriots and heroes and claiming the list contained pro-Russian actors from Romania and Moldova. He added that the list was probably already known to Azov, Ukrainian services, Western services and others. We offered a right of reply to Alianța in letters addressed to each board member and to former US ambassadors — no answer was received.

Alianța bills itself as a nonpartisan 501(c)(3), yet its own Board Chair, former US Ambassador Adrian Zuckerman, used an interview to declare the leading conservative opposition party, AUR, “a party dangerous to Romania, dangerous to democracy, dangerous to the West — a party that shouldn’t exist in Romania.” A US tax-exempt nonpartisan organization is, on its own platform, calling for the elimination of a Romanian parliamentary party.

One of the most revealing pieces of language in this ecosystem has been recently supplied by Marius Bostan, shareholder of Newsweek România and central actor in the Alianța network. At the Newsweek IT & Cyber Summit 2026, Bostan compared ideological opponents to pests invading a field and argued that rapid intervention was necessary: “When pests invade a field you need to spray quickly. If you don’t react immediately, you lose.” He continued: “Sometimes attack is a better form of defense. The destruction of these emitters of toxic ideas must be part of the response.”

The wording mirrors the coercive logic already present in Meșeșan’s Fifth Column manifesto. Bostan was not speaking as an anonymous extremist but as a Newsweek România shareholder and Alianța figure, at a Newsweek-branded event, immediately after a Presidential Palace summit devoted to informational resilience where the leading opposition faces were put on display as “public vectors of disinformation”. The pinnacle of Romania’s executive power hosting an event targeting the opposition as an enemy in an information war. When a democracy crumbles, signs are everywhere.

This is why the Fifth Column database cannot be understood as an isolated website run by a fringe armed group. The labels appearing on the list often predate the list itself. They emerge first in media coverage, public campaigns, anti-disinformation initiatives, political commentary and institutional discourse.

At the end of the day, the tabloidisation of Newsweek România, the extremely low level of “hit job journalism,” is a matter that would be solved by the market and readers’ interest. Except for the government money that flows into this ecosystem, directly or indirectly. Which leads to the bigger issue — more problematic than Newsweek România producing trash news and hit pieces: the role of Romania’s regime.

The Consequences of a Lie — The 2024 Election Annulment

To understand the current situation in Romania, we need to go back to the 2024 presidential election, when an outsider candidate, Călin Georgescu, won the first round with 23% of the vote. A second round was scheduled for December 8, 2024. It never happened. On December 6 — with voting in Romania’s large overseas diaspora already under way — the Constitutional Court annulled the entire electoral process. The annulment followed roughly two weeks of public signaling about alleged Russian interference and algorithmic manipulation, driven by a series of NGOs financed by the European Commission calling on Brussels for help.

What followed was a ritual of whitewashing the decision, by European leaders spinning the idea that Russia was behind Georgescu’s success. Macron offered one of the most revealing examples, declaring in a February 2025 live broadcast that the court had detected fraud, vote purchases, and annulled the election because of Russian interference. One fabrication after another. In reality, the Constitutional Court had validated the first round (Decision 31), finding no electoral fraud, and its annulment decision contains no attribution of the result to Russia (Decision 32).

We are now in June 2026. Romania has never formally attributed the Georgescu campaign to Russia. Romanians are still being told that proof is about to be released by President Nicușor Dan. The implicit conclusion is twofold: at the time of the annulment, the Constitutional Court had no proof of Russian meddling — yet it annulled the election. And eighteen months later, the reason proof has not been produced is likely that there was no provable decisive Russian interference.

Alternative Explanations Identified After the Annulment

The few operations that were identified — including those referenced in the Defense Council meeting that served as justification for the annulment — actually originated from Romania and Ukraine.

On December 6 and 13, 2024, French daily Le Monde identified a Ukrainian sponsor behind the Georgescu influencer campaign: Dmitriy Makarov, a 32-year-old Ukrainian entrepreneur who had previously publicly supported Ukraine against Russia, whose companies — FA Agency, GMG, and Zlodeї — recruited influencers to promote Georgescu.

On December 18, the Romanian outlet Snoop.ro revealed that PNL, the National Liberal Party, a member of the governing coalition, had financed one of the campaigns promoting its own competitor, Georgescu. That a governing party financed the rise of a candidate deemed so dangerous the election had to be annulled — leaving that party in power — remains one of the least addressed paradoxes of Romania’s democratic regression.

2024 — a Modern Taboo

Since then, saying there is no proof of Russian involvement has become the new taboo. On March 5, 2026, journalist Lucian Davidescu was fact-checked by Romania’s leading fact-checker, Factual — run by Funky Citizens, on Meta’s platform — for stating precisely that there was no real Russian implication in the 2024 election. The “fact-check” affirmed information directly contradicted by the Constitutional Court’s own decisions it was referring to. Davidescu obtained the publication of a Right of Reply response, but the fact-check stayed for months as a “flagged issue” on his Facebook account. Challenging the “successful Russian interference” narrative is nevertheless a widespread opinion, shared by former president Traian Băsescu, and even by Georgescu’s opponent in the second round that never took place, Elena Lasconi — at the time endorsed by Macron himself.

Also on the Getica list, journalist Marius Tuca had been censored by the National Council for Audiovisual in March 2025 for calling the 2024-2025 sequence a coup — two months before the rerun of the presidential election, which Georgescu was barred from running in. One of the grievances against me is precisely to have described a judicial coup (see the timeline of the coup here).

In May 2026, eighteen months after the annulment, President Nicușor Dan delivered yet another interview promising the long-awaited report.

Proper attribution should be the golden rule when framing anything as a Russian influence. As I argue in my articles “The Iceberg That Can Sink Europe” and in “European Diplomacy Seems too Ashamed to Look at What Happened in Romania”, using the concept of Foreign Influence to target people who have no ties to a foreign power is an extremely dangerous game – one that leads to more “fifth column” craze and McCarthyism.

It’s all the more important to remember that, since when it comes to attribution, Romania is far from being a powerless state.

The State That Chose Not to See

Romania’s internal intelligence service, the SRI, operates on a budget of over one billion dollars annually — three times that of France’s DGSI in nominal terms, six times in purchasing power parity, for a country three to four times smaller. All in all, ten to twenty times more resources per capita dedicated to surveillance and control. Not to mention that France has numerous terrorist threats to handle, whereas Getica seems to be the only one the Romanian authority have to deal with… The overpowered capacity of Romania’s intelligence services was praised in 2023 by Brigadier General Anton Rog, head of Cyberint — SRI’s cyber intelligence division — explaining in precise terms what his agency could do when democracy was under attack. It could counter campaigns online, take down websites, shut down operations. “We can get such a warrant in less than an hour,” he said.

Yet when the Georgescu campaign was running in late 2024, nothing happened.

When Getica published its blacklist, threatened journalists, doxxed families, and announced missions on Romanian soil, nothing happened.

When AUR MP Dan Tanasă sent a formal parliamentary question (PDF) about the armed paramilitary group Getica to the government — still nothing, just a four page reply (PDF). The response, Tanasă said, contained no indication that the matter had been referred to DIICOT (the Directorate for Investigating Organized Crime and Terrorism) or any other investigative authority.

A member of Parliament asked them about a band of volunteers that carry arms and that make lists of the enemies [including members of] the Romanian Parliament and they did nothing

Tanasă said, adding that

The purpose of this list is to silence the people on it one way or another, either through public shaming or, who knows, by a lunatic who would believe that I or any other person on this list is paid by Russia and would try to harm us physically

Tanasă is currently preparing a criminal complaint against those responsible for the project.

And the Media That Chose Not to See

Since its first appearance in September 2023, Getica has drawn more than forty favorable pieces in the Romanian press — nearly half of them published after the blacklist’s existence was already known. The most revealing reporting on the matter came instead from Sebastian Dracopol, one of the people Getica blacklisted: first on his Substack, and more recently through his NGO, Patria Prima. He documented Meșeșan’s criminal past, the opacity of Hossu’s fundraising, and unresolved questions about the group’s actual combat record. Meșeșan’s answer to the latest reveal was to launch a fresh fundraising campaign on June 6, 2026 — to cover legal fees for suing Patria Prima and to buy military gear — this time routed through an NGO ostensibly dedicated to civilian aid, Volunteers Without Borders. The NGO did not respond to our request for comment.

Recently, Patria Prima started asking every outlet why they presented Getica as a military unit, implicitly helping them to raise money, whereas the Ukrainian army denied any responsibility for it and Mesesan – as well as Hossu – reframed the group as an informal one. As a response, yet another article was published, by Veridica, in support of Getica. Patria Prima announced suing again. The author, Alex Craiu Rosenberg then published a video to frame Dracopol’s actions as SLAPP – Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation. The missing element of this analysis is the relation of power – Getica is a criminal, illegal, anti-constitutional and dangerous group who raised money in an illegal manner, yet benefits from the complacency of power, serves the interests of one or more parties of the governing coalition, and receives positive coverage from a press that lives off some executive power money (may it be the Romanian government or the money from Foreign countries – as Veridica does). Like for Newsweek’s hit pieces, Veridica’s work doesn’t qualify for the SLAPP victim card – it is part of the larger propaganda, censorship and coercion machine that targets critics, the opposition, and other nonaligned voices.

When asked about the impunity that Getica enjoys, several journalists present on the list pointed to the entanglement with Romania’s intelligence services and how Romanian military personnel often go on leave to participate in paid missions — as mercenaries. This is corroborated by something I found out investigating the DSA in September 2025, when I was told by Freedom House Romania’s Director, Cristina Guseth, that Getica was part of the support provided by Romania to Ukraine, and “something that the Romanian government decided not to make public.”

This could explain a part of the ambiguity and the silence our investigation received. Why public responsibility for Getica’s activities remained unclaimed.

On October 27, 2025, Romania’s Intelligence Service — the SRI — responded to a formal parliamentary question submitted by AUR MP Fabian Radu, a member of the Joint Standing Committee exercising parliamentary oversight of SRI’s activities. The response invoked information classification and the “need to know” principle, offering no substantive answer. The formulation leaves two possibilities open: either the issue is being monitored and is too sensitive to be made public, or the non-answer is itself a cover.

The months that followed make the silence harder to explain. Between late 2025 and mid-2026, the list expanded further — adding US politicians, more members of the opposition, and me, a French journalist. During the same period, Getica’s founder began publishing video tutorials on preparing First-Person View (FPV) drones for military use.

On June 7, the Getica account republished on X a video montage of FPV drone footage reaching their targets: 67 different Russian soldiers (with possibly a civilian among them)

Monitoring Failure or State Complicity?

If Romania’s Intelligence Services’ intent was to monitor — through surveillance or infiltration — before acting against Getica, eight months seem more than enough time to assess and intervene. But if Romanian intelligence services have some form of control over the battlegroup, then the continued expansion of the blacklist to include opposition politicians, journalists, and US citizens during that period is not a failure of oversight, but a state scandal.

The Ministry of Internal Affairs (MAI) did respond to our investigation, but only to state that, pursuant to Article 285(2) of the Criminal Procedure Code, criminal investigation proceedings are non-public — neither confirming nor denying that any proceeding exists.

Romania’s Intelligence Service (SRI) also replied, citing the classified nature of its activities, and neither confirmed nor denied whether Getica had ever been assessed as a national-security concern, whether information had been transmitted to Romanian authorities, or whether any monitoring or investigation existed.

As mentioned, formal inquiries sent to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Romanian Presidency, and the French Presidency received no reply. The atmosphere is one of pervasive institutional ambiguity, in which responsibility is continually deferred while the blacklist continues to expand.

Three months ago, in a private conversation with a member of the Romanian government, I asked about the incapacity to prove Russian interference and the widespread suspicion that what happened was an inside job — the answer was unambiguous: “Of course. But you do realize that if they admit it wasn’t the Russians, the country would descend into chaos.”

Three months later, the credibility and legitimacy of Romania’s current regime are lower than ever. A vote of no confidence brought down the government on May 5. One month later, a Ukrainian drone exploded in the Romanian port of Constanța, and the authorities failed to obtain a clear explanation from Ukraine or to provide the public with a convincing account of the incident. The prospect of impeaching President Dan — unthinkable until recently — is now on the table.

The original article

Stéphane Luçon is a French journalist based in Romania. After Romania’s annulled elections, he began investigating the EU’s Digital Services Act — censorship, transparency failures — and its impact on the information flow

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