
The French did it? The Kremlin playbook strikes again
Last week saw a new, yet familiar narrative circulate aimed at discrediting the democratic elections in Romania and stirring mistrust of European institutions. According to a recent disinfor-mation narrative, France’s intelligence services some-how ‘rigged’ Romania’s elections to block hard-right presidential candidate George Simion, all under the watchful eye of a so-called ‘European mafia’. The story, amplified by pro-Kremlin and fringe platforms, falsely claims that Telegram founder Pavel Durov exposed a plot by French secret services to censor Romanian opposition voices – and that this censorship handed a stolen election to the elites. The tale does not stop there. It uses the idea that ‘the people never decide anything’, an assertion designed to amplify cynicism, ethnic division, and institutional distrust. […]