On August 24, 2023, I published on the online platforms Culture magazine and blogs Adevărul an editorial entitled “Moscow is here!”. At that time, we publicly signal that Russia no longer needs tanks to destabilize Europe.
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It does not need any large secret agents or cross -border military operations. It gets to use algorithms, social networks, misinformation structures, “useful idiots” and other materials adapted to the “client”, to create the perception of a deficit – or even a vacuum – of democratic responsibility. We warned then that Romania is already in a hybrid war, which we are either not able or we do not want to recognize.
From then until today, the facts have confirmed these warnings. Platforms such as Tiktok – which I drew attention to they can be used for manipulative purposes – have become essential to build an artificial notoriety for characters otherwise without relevance. The case of Călin Georgescu, propelled from anonymity to the second round of the presidential elections (2024) through an emotional, simplistic and often conspiratorial content network, has already become a case study in the informational war textbooks. No program, no party structure, no ideal confrontation – just algorithms, resentments and a storytelling parallel to reality. Slow but effective intoxication, which uses precisely the weaknesses of open democracy: freedom of expression, pluralism of opinion, speed of technology.
Behind this “explosion” of visibility and sympathy for “sovereign” politicians, participants in the 2024 and 2025 elections, were invested, on occult channels, millions of dollars, in order to hijack the most important moment of any democracy: the elections. Not only the institutions in Romania, but also many other Western states have made efforts to block this attack, to identify the cracks through which the Kremlin has made place in the middle of the political competition in Bucharest and to counteract the future hybrid assaults on the countries that have scheduled elections-the Republic of Moldova, in 2025, and, later, France.
Today, in Bucharest, not only are we in the same hybrid war, but we have amplified all possible resonance lines. The electoral clashes of 2024 and 2025, the opportunism or complicity of some politicians, press owners, journalists and analysts living from “disclosures” and breaking [fake] News-many of them fueled by obscure channels that lead directly to the Kremlin-, together with the fiscal dismantling of the last years, now corrected by the USR-PNL-UDMR-Minorita-PSD governing coalition, through a series of precipitated measures, we bring us to a critical point of Romanian democracy. We have a tense internal painting, which risks overlapping tectonically over regional and global geopolitical changes. We can, irresponsible, ignore them; However, they will not bypass us.
We talked about the hybrid war and we will have to continue to speak, all the more so as Romania is not ready to understand – at the institutional and civic level – the exact nature of the dangers. From week to week, new techniques and ways of attack appear. From day to day, hundreds and thousands of citizens fall prey to systematic misinformation that, overlapping real problems, reach the critical point of social and political flammability.
Hate is distributed and accumulated daily in the public space. A “well-calibrated” influencer, a pseudo-analyst with radicalized speech or a “antisystem” politician can handle millions of people with minimum costs and maximum validations. There is no need to impose the lie; It is sufficient to erode the truth, to relate it, to trivialize it, to mix it in a noian of opinions and emotions, until it becomes only a “variant”, among others.
This strategy was also seen in the wave of symbolic rehabilitation of extremism. The Legionary Movement, of which I constantly warned that it is trying to re-pack in nationalist-populist key, has been evoked more and more in public speeches, podcasts, manifests and election campaigns. Not frontal, but insinuant, by calling “traditions”, “identity”, “sacrifice for the nation”. In parallel, the democratic discourse was atrophied, and the balanced voices were pushed to the periphery or silenced by ridicule or by labeling as a “system”. This is how a hybrid war works: it does not tear down the walls by force, but erodes them until the pebbles become, over which you can step on.
The greatest danger is no longer the direct aggression, but the slow wear of the vigilance. After each crisis, after each election campaign, the Romanian society tends to believe that “it is over” or, in other words: “Ready, I escaped!”. Nothing more wrong. The hybrid war has no breaks. He insinuates, dig, divide. Attack rationality, cultivate suspicion, exploit any credibility breach. Does not stop between elections; On the contrary, it acts more efficiently when the “victim” – that is, we relax.
I saw coordinated attacks against some institutions – the Constitutional Court, the Court of Accounts, the National Bank, the Government and the Ministries, the Intelligence Services, the Army, the Universities, the Hospitals, the Independent Press – without a purpose than to weaken the collective trust. I have seen attacks against politicians, judges, diplomats, teachers, journalists trying to maintain a balanced speech. I saw how each real vulnerability was amplified to the caricature, while the reform efforts were ridiculed or diverted. I saw how fictitious enemies are built – “Parallel State”, “Globalist occult”, “paid experts”, “CCR judges” – and how the idea of public responsibility is abandoned. In this landscape, there is a kind of pressure on those who do not join the hysteria: the one who does not produce or consumes panic is considered suspicious, possibly even part of the problem. This reveals the meanings: lucidity is interpreted as weakness, and hysteria becomes truth.
We should not keep ourselves to say that we are in a hybrid war, which, on the merits, is also war, as dangerous, in the medium and long term, as the classic wars. And this type of war, which is adapted to the 21st century, has victims-otherwise it would not have been called “war”. We must not fall into the trap of ignoring reality, for fear of panic. We must not avoid the truth: we are attacked daily, by various methods, by Russia, for at least 12 years. When I was Minister of Education, in the Ponta II Government (2012-2014), the Minister of Defense since then, Mircea Duşa, informed us about how Russian military aircraft rapes the Romanian air space, ignoring any international norm. Also, at that time, the media campaign against the exploitation of natural gas by the American company Chevron (for example, “Pungești Revolt”) was carefully coordinated by people with KGB skills. And these are just a few examples of hybrid attack.
Today, allied troops and equipment – including the missile system from Deveselu and the military base in Kogălniceanu – are, together with the Romanian military, in the first line of border defense, which are also the eastern border of the EU and NATO. Their presence disturbs Moscow enormously.
Today, unlike 2012-2014, we know that Russia directly funds political formations, politicians and journalists in Bucharest, in order to weaken Romania's attachment to the EU and NATO. However, we avoid triggering the institutional procedures provided by the Constitution and by law to investigate foreign interference in Romanian politics. Other countries have been doing it for years.
It is not a shame to analyze and maybe even learn from other states in the vicinity of the Kremlin aggressor. The President of Finland, Alexander Stubb, a man whom the Western world-and not only-treats with great respect, recently remembered in an interview (Sabina Fati, about the silence of Romania and why it cannot be like Finland-DW-21.08.2025) that his country has been preparing for decades for the scenario of a Russia, because in the last 300 years, for the last 300 years, because in Romania- Several times, attacked and occupied by Russia, attacks after which he lost territories and citizens.
Therefore, I think we need to stop being hesitant.
We must be able to say clearly, without fear: Moscow is (everything) here and attacks, every day, the foundation of this people. Not in the form of an army on the border, but as a background noise that dissolves democratic culture. It is here, in the digital algorithms that favor the sensational. It is here, in the cynicism cultivated deliberately. It is here, in the misinformation networks and in the silent complications of some segments of the local elite. It is here through those who, out of stupidity, fear or opportunism, serve a destabilizing speech under the mask of a false patriotism. Some are Kremlin agents in Bucharest, others, mere unconscious vectors. But, as I have written, the most dangerous remain “useful idiots” – seemingly honorable figures, convinced that they are doing well, but who play perfectly in the hands of those who follow the collapse of democracy.
What is to be done?
No noise, but clarity. No repression, but discernment.
We need leadership that understands the complexity of these phenomena and refuses the temptation of easy solutions. We need an educational system that forms citizens capable of recognizing manipulation. We need respected teachers, integral journalists and a society that does not give up reason, even when the emotion is intense, and the temptation of seductive radicalism.
I said this before, but it is essential to repeat: in an era in which the truth is challenged by opinion, and the opinion is replaced by the sensation, lucidity becomes an act of resistance. Maybe we won't be able to stop all the waves that come. But we can strengthen the dams – calmly, with intelligence, with a solid historical memory.
On August 24, 2023, I drew an alarm signal and stated: “Moscow is here!” Unfortunately, time confirmed this, especially during the presidential elections of November 2024.
In August 2025, I say with even more firmness: “Moscow is also here!”, And if we do not decide to act, we will discover that, in the parliamentary elections of 2028, it will be stored and deeper into the Romanian society. And the next easy redness will obviously be Cotroceni, 2030.
Therefore, it would be wise to act now, responsibly, in the letter and in the spirit of the Constitution and the law, so that Romania remains of the Romanians, not to capitulate before the politicians painted daily by Moscow propaganda as “patriots”.
