The unexpected winner of the first round of the Romanian presidential elections, Calin Georgescu, has promised that if he wins the second round on Sunday he will try to block the sending of aid to Ukraine, claiming that the priority will be the Romanians.
A defender of far-right and nationalist ideas, Georgescu announced that under him there will be "zero" political and military aid to Kyiv.
"Everything will stop. I have to worry about my people. We already have enough problems," the politician argued in an interview with British public radio BBC to justify the end of support for Kyiv, which has been facing a Russian invasion since February 2022.
Romania's head of state is the one who sets the guidelines for foreign and security policy.
Georgescu also denied being "Moscow's man" in these elections, despite Romanian authorities confirming that Russia tried to influence the process for its own benefit.
The candidate assured that he is not an "admirer" of Russian President Vladimir Putin, despite describing him as a "patriot" and a "leader".
The international community "cannot accept that the Romanian people have finally said 'we want to recover our lives, our country, our dignity'", the Romanian added, calling doubts about his victory in the first round "lies".
The Romanian Supreme Council of National Defense warned in its report about Russian interference attempts and questioned the role of the social network TikTok, a basic pillar of the campaign of the far-right candidate, who denied having favored Georgescu.
The Romanian Prosecutor's Office is also investigating the origin of the funds for this campaign.
On Monday, after a new count, the Constitutional Court of Romania validated the results of the first round of the presidential elections, held on the 24th.
In a country in a climate of political turmoil, the decision of the Constitutional Court clarified the situation and allows a second round of the presidential elections next Sunday, under the conditions initially foreseen.
In the first round, against general expectations and what the polls indicated, Georgescu won with 23% of the votes, followed by the conservative and pro-European Elena Lasconi, who won - by a narrow margin and only around two thousand votes - over the Romanian Prime Minister, the Social Democrat Marcel Ciolacu, who after the electoral disaster resigned as president of his party.
Georgescu, who did not have the support of any party, also won the first round among the diaspora, especially among Romanians living in countries such as the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Germany and Spain.
Lasconi, who aims to be the first woman to hold the position of head of state, announced that she would seek alliances to win the presidential elections and form a right-wing government.
The conservative politician has the support of her party, the centrist USR, but also of the National Liberal Party (PNL) and the Hungarian minority party UDMR. However, the governing Social Democratic Party (PSD, led by Ciolacu) did not express its support and limited itself to saying that voters will be able to decide.
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