Can a massive wave of lies bring a great truth into the open once and for all? Yes.
The force with which Russia activated its influence network in Romania, trying to bury in disinformation the fact that the drone that exploded in Galați was Russian, created enough confusion among those who accept every absurdity pushed on social media by professional manipulators.
At the same time, however, it also erased any remaining doubt that the main source of Călin Georgescu’s meteoric rise before the first round of Romania’s 2024 presidential election was Russia. And that it is still Russia, using the same mechanisms for manipulating public opinion, that is trying to keep alive the myth of Georgescu the savior, supposedly punished because he wants to free Romania from the tyranny of the European Union.
No secret document, spectacular intercept, or revealing bank transfer was needed for this definitive confirmation. In this case, the repeated behavior of the Kremlin-coordinated network of propaganda, disinformation, and manipulation says more than any official statement could.
Within minutes of the explosion, the same networks that had pushed Georgescu before the first round, the same influencers who portrayed him as a victim after he was removed from the race, the same accounts demanding “the second round back,” mobilized with the same speed and the same aggression to promote a claim perfectly convenient for Moscow: the drone was Ukrainian.
If the Georgescu network had nothing to do with Russia, how do we explain the fact that the same people, using the same tools and the same power of amplification, are now promoting exactly the lie that serves absolutely no one except Russia?
If “CG president” is merely a Romanian movement, born spontaneously out of domestic anger or created by obscure internal forces, how is it that, at the moment of a military incident involving Russia, its automatic reflex is to defend Russia? If these influencers are merely “patriots,” merely “anti-system,” merely “anti-PSD,” merely “anti-globalist,” or merely paid by some domestic faction, why do they fall into line so neatly with Moscow’s version?
How much coincidence is too much coincidence?
The lies are, as usual, crude: “the drone was not Russian, it was Ukrainian”; “the timing was suspicious”; “the SAFE contracts were blocked and a pretext was needed to speed up their signing”; “the Romanian state orchestrated the whole thing.” The spectacular success lies in the coordination, the speed, and the almost perfect overlap between the people who worked on the Georgescu myth and those now working to exonerate Russia.
A network does not wake up within a few hours with the same message, the same direction, and the same discipline unless it has some logic of command. It may not be a classic military command. It may not come through a written order. But there is a center of gravity. There is a shared agenda. There is a political loyalty. And in this case, that loyalty is not to truth, not to Romania, and not to the victims. It is to Russia’s narrative.
That is why the Galați case is far more than a security incident. It is a live demonstration. A laboratory test carried out in real time, before our eyes. We were able to see how the same influence infrastructure activates, how it changes subject without changing method, how it moves from defending Georgescu to defending Russia without the slightest hesitation. Yesterday, the claim was that Georgescu was the victim of the system. Today, the claim is that Russia is the victim of a setup. The mechanism is the same. Only the object of the propaganda has changed.
This radically changes how the Georgescu campaign must be read. Until now, one could say there were indicators: artificial growth, coordinated amplification, aggressively promoted network content, anti-EU and anti-state messages, sovereigntist themes perfectly compatible with Russian propaganda. After Galați, we are no longer talking merely about ideological compatibility. We are seeing operational continuity. The same infrastructure that produced political capital for Georgescu is now producing propaganda cover for Russia.
In politics and in information warfare, this is a far stronger indicator than it may seem at first glance. You do not need to prove that every influencer received a phone call from Moscow. You do not need to find an order, an invoice, or a crypto wallet for every account. When the same network pushes, in succession, the Russia-friendly candidate and then the lie convenient for Russia in a military incident directly tied to Russia, the “coincidence” explanation becomes absurd.
Russia itself completed the picture. Before the explosion, the Russian ambassador had made defiant public statements. After the drone fell, Medvedev turned the Galați episode into a warning to Europe. The Russian Foreign Ministry responded to the closure of the consulate in Constanța with direct threats. The tone is no longer disguised. Nor is the method.
With Georgescu, Moscow worked through shadows: algorithms, money, crypto, amplification networks, influencers, manufactured outrage. Now it works with drones. It acts and threatens openly.
The same handler. A different weapon.
Was this exposure accidental? Was it so important for Russia to flood social media with transparent denials — “the drone was not Russian,” “Russia does not attack Romanians,” “the whole thing is a provocation” — that it accepted the risk of exposing its local network of influencers, propagandists, and useful idiots?
No. It was not an accident and it was not a sacrifice. Moscow no longer cares that it is exposing its people. In the previous stage, when it still needed ambiguity, the network had to look organic, Romanian, patriotic, indignant on its own initiative. Now ambiguity has become secondary. What matters is volume and the level of noise. The top priority is that, in the first hours after an attack, the public space be drowned in lies until the truth is pushed into a corner and forced to defend itself.
If this had been a coordination error, or an unavoidable sacrifice, Medvedev would not have come out the next day to turn Galați into a warning to Europe. His message, that Europe no longer has reason to sleep peacefully, is in fact the announcement that Russia no longer feels the need to hide. It has moved from denial to intimidation, from covert operations to public threat.
The explanation is brutal: Russia is in an increasingly difficult position in Ukraine, and when an aggressive power feels it is losing control over the war it started, it looks for a way out by expanding the crisis. If it cannot win on the front, it tries to set the neighborhood on fire. If it cannot force Ukraine’s capitulation, it tries to frighten Europe.
Does that sound exaggerated? Exactly this logic could also be seen in Iran’s behavior. Instead of limiting its retaliation to direct adversaries, it began striking around itself, attacking its neighbors with drones and missiles, exporting chaos as a method of strategic survival.
Add the fact that Russia has remained Iran’s most important ally, and that Moscow and Tehran coordinate strategically and tactically, and suddenly the hybrid attacks in Europe, drone incidents, sabotage operations, disinformation campaigns, and pressure on frontier states no longer look like separate episodes. They look like parts of a shared doctrine: when the regime is pushed into difficulty, it expands the battlefield.
This is very bad news for Romania, Poland, the Republic of Moldova, and the Baltic states. An Iranian-style escalation in Eastern Europe and in the former Soviet republics that have joined NATO can no longer be dismissed as alarmist fantasy. Its risk grows precisely as Russia’s position deteriorates in Ukraine. Paradoxically only at first glance, the more Moscow feels cornered, the more dangerous it becomes for its neighbors.
When Russia feels it is losing the war it unleashed, we must expect the worst. Not because it is irrational, but because, in its logic, setting Europe on fire can become the last form of negotiation.
Our future will not be shaped only by Russia, but also by the reaction of the Romanian state. For now, judging by how it has handled the risks amplified by the war in Ukraine, the state seems unaware that we have entered a critical zone.
The Romanian state left open the door through which Russia entered. Georgescu did not appear out of nowhere. He is a product of the Foreign Intelligence Directorate of the Ceaușescu regime, taken over by toxic networks that made serious money by parasitizing state institutions. He ended up running for president pushed by old complicities and by political calculations made with cynicism and irresponsibility. His candidacy became important for political groups that wanted to disrupt another deal, another runoff, another power arrangement. In the cracks created by these internal battles, Russia saw its opportunity. It entered, drove the wedge deeper, amplified, and radicalized.
But the fact that Moscow used the dysfunctions of the Romanian political class and state does not make it any less dangerous. Russia does not interfere so that Romanians may live better. On the contrary. In order to bring obedient people to power in countries it does not control, it looks for the weaknesses of the target state, exploits them, and turns them into weapons.
Russia’s target is not a politician or a government. The target is Romania as a pro-Western state, a member of the EU and NATO. An imperfect Romania, hesitant, often poorly governed, but one that, over the past thirty years, has left Moscow’s orbit. A Romania that helped the Republic of Moldova resist Russian pressure and take decisive steps toward EU integration. A Romania that consistently supports Ukraine. A Romania that, through the gas in the Black Sea, will matter as an energy power in a region from which Russia has been expelled. A Romania that, by accepting the deployment of the missile defense shield at Deveselu, forced Moscow to rethink part of its military architecture.
Russia knows what it lost here. And it knows what else it could lose. It will not hesitate to go as far as it is allowed to go.
Just as it did in Ukraine. First, it installed a puppet president. When he was removed and Kyiv’s pro-Western path became irreversible, Moscow moved to bombs. When it could no longer control, it began to destroy.
At Galați, Russia tested how far it could push the line. It tested the Romanian state, NATO’s reaction, and our psychological resilience. At the same time, through the way it set its internal network in motion, it showed us that between Friday’s drone and Georgescu’s campaign there is only a difference of instrument.
We know who sent the drone. The question is what we do now that we know. If the Romanian state does not enter a state of real alert — and perhaps the proper term is no longer “alert,” but preparation for war — we may discover that the information war lost on social media was only the first salvo.