Romanian presidential hopeful Mircea Geoană in hot water after investigation alleges associate’s Russian ties

Romania’s presidential candidate Mircea Geoană, former NATO Deputy Secretary General, claimed he is subject to a media lynching campaign after an investigative report drafted by Context.ro revealed that one of his former active supporters, Rareș Mănescu, set up a firm with a Russian partner and propagandist.

On September 11, the former NATO official Mircea Geoană officially began his campaign for president, after topping the polls for months before. “We are not perfect. I am not perfect. But you know what we can do? We can work. We can roll up our sleeves and build a better country," Geoană says in his presidential campaign video.

On October 1, journalists at Context.ro published an investigation showing how Rareș Mănescu, a former Liberal mayor, registered a company with Russian businessman Aleksei Kozlov, also known as Alex Krepchinsky, while he was part of Mircea Geoană's campaign team. Journalists made the allegation after they obtained an email from the internal servers of the Geoană campaign in which Mănescu is named head of the campaigning efforts in Bucharest.

Rareș Mănescu’s Russian partner is also a blogger who, after the 2014 invasion of Crimea, published pro-Russian content. Mănescu refused to answer questions regarding his business partner's propaganda activities in Ukraine. He briefly stated that he left Geoană's campaign "five months ago", that is, in May. The journalistic investigation shows a number of ramifications that even lead to a mercenary who fought in Donbas on the side of the Russians.

“It is quite shocking that NATO would overlook things like this when appointing people to such senior roles. And Romanian voters should bear this in mind when casting their ballots next month,” said Russian businessman-turned-dissident Mikhail Khodorkovsky, sharing the investigation on X.

He went on in subsequent posts, arguing that while Geoană speaks publicly against Russia, he had ties to Moscow in the past, referencing the candidate’s unannounced trip to the Russian capital back in 2009. Mircea Geoană has faced such allegations during the current campaign, noting that in those years the new Russian president Medvedev, now a staunch ally of Putin and one of the biggest supporters of the war in Ukraine, showed more openness to the West. The trip, he says