I'll rip up British defence treaty, threatens Europe's latest far-Right firebrand

Yahoo

20-03-2025

The frontrunner in Romania's controversial presidential elections has threatened to tear up a defence pact with Britain unless Ukraine 'learns how to behave'.
Measures in the pact have Romanian troops train Ukrainian soldiers in the UK. However, speaking exclusively to The Telegraph, George Simion said that under his presidency, this would only continue if Kyiv learnt to 'respect the rights of Romanian speakers in Ukraine'.
The far-Right presidential frontrunner, who is banned from entering Ukraine, demanded Kyiv show greater respect to the country's Romanian ethnic minority, including to their schools and churches, while painting himself as a more moderate, Western-friendly candidate on Russia and Nato.
Romania's presidential elections have gained international attention after a first-round ballot was won by a pro-Putin candidate in November, before being annulled over allegations of Russian interference.
The annulment has drawn interventions from European nations, the White House and the Kremlin as the fate of Romania has become both a litmus test for free speech and a proxy for tensions between the East and West.
The first-round ballot was won by Calin Georgescu, a pro-Kremlin ultra-nationalist, with the support of Mr Simion and his far-Right Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR) party.
Marcel Ciolacu, the Social Democrat party candidate and the architect of Sir Keir Starmer's Anglo-Romanian defence treaty, resigned after the two mainstream Romanian parties failed to get their candidates to the second round for the first time in the country's post-Communist history.
Romanian politics were then thrown into disarray when the country's top court voided the results after the national intelligence agency claimed 'aggressive hybrid Russian attacks' had taken place during the election and that Mr Georgescu's popularity was driven by a 'guerrilla' messaging strategy co-ordinated by a 'state actor'.
As the country geared up for an election re-run set for May, the election bureau made the decision last week to bar Mr Georgescu along with the boxing-glove-wielding Diana Sosoaca, another ultra-nationalist pro-Putin candidate, from running in the do-over.
Ms Sosoaca, a former member of Mr Simion's AUR party who was expelled for damaging its image and has been accused of anti-Semitism, applied as the candidate for the SOS Romania party.
But Mr Simion received the green light from the election bureau on Saturday despite having been put under criminal investigation for calling for electoral body members to be 'skinned alive' for barring Mr Georgescu. With polls currently putting him in the lead for the first round of the re-run, Mr Simion is looking to unite the far-Right.
In comments to The Telegraph, Ms Sosoaca called Mr Simion a 'Trojan horse of the globalists' while characterising the rejection of her candidacy as a 'coup d'état in continuous form'.
Mr Simion has had a rapid rise in Romanian politics after creating the AUR in 2019 with the intention of unifying ethnic Romanians and gaining prominence as an anti-vaccine campaigner during the Covid-19 pandemic.
He has moderated some of the party's earlier stances, which had led it to being rebuked internationally over anti-Semitism after its leaders expressed admiration for Ion Antonescu, a Romanian wartime dictator and ally of Hitler. He also opposed a mandate of Holocaust education in Romanian schools.
The party has in the past called for restoring the Romanian state 'within its natural borders', through claiming territories including the regions of Bessarabia, Northern Bukovina, and Transcarpathia in western Ukraine.
In an exclusive interview with The Telegraph, Mr Simion cast doubt over the future of the defence pact between Britain and Romania.
Under the Anglo-Romanian defence treaty agreed between Sir Keir Starmer and Mr Ciolacu in November, the two countries have a joint defence committee co-ordinating support for Ukraine and as part of 'Operation Interflex', Bucharest sends military personnel to the UK to train Ukrainian recruits.
'We helped a lot with the Ukrainian war efforts, with money, with guns, with cyber and with humanitarian aid,' Mr Simion said.
Discussing the training of soldiers conducted under the defence treaty, he added: 'This can continue for defensive missions only if Ukraine learns how to behave and to respect the rights of the 500,000 Romanian speakers in Ukraine.
'Meaning respecting their right to have schools, respecting Romanian churches, and meaning that Ukrainians do not behave in Soviet style like their cousins, the Russians.
'They should learn also respect and they should learn to give a little back.
'This didn't happen even after we supported Ukraine quite a lot, and the population in Romania is not happy with this.'
Mr Simion clarified that he was willing to support the deal but would need an 'understanding with Kyiv that they will finally respect the rights of the Romanian minority'.
Mr Simion was banned from entering the country over security concerns as well as promoting 'unionist ideology questioning the legitimacy of Ukraine's borders' and 'narratives alleging the violation of rights for Romania's ethnic minority in Ukraine'.
Mr Simion denied any wrongdoing to The Telegraph, claiming he 'did not promote a criminal ideology' and 'didn't promote anything against international laws'.
Whilst decrying Romania's historical loss of parts of Bukovina and Bessarabia during the Second World War as having its borders 'teared out', Mr Simion said: 'We respect Ukrainian territorial integrity'.
'We will continue to respect all countries that are recognised by the UN because this is the current international security architecture and because we believe in respecting the laws inside and outside Romania.'
He also stated his continued support for unification with Moldova, for which the republic, like Ukraine, has banned Mr Simion from entering the country.
Mr Simion said: 'We will not demand territories. So yes, I want to unite with the Republic of Moldova, but only if the Republic of Moldova will want it.
'I cannot go with guns and bombs and tanks in Putin style, in Stalin and Hitler style.'
Romania has been an important part of European and Nato efforts to support Kyiv, sharing a 400-mile border with Ukraine and sitting across the Black Sea from Russia-occupied Crimea.
The country has provided transit routes for Ukrainian grain supplies, has been expanding its Nato airbase to become the biggest in Europe. Romania also recently hosted British military drills on its eastern border. It also hosts an American Aegis Ashore missile defence system.
Mr Georgescu's success caused concern within the Nato alliance, as the Nato-skeptic candidate labelled the American missiles a national 'shame' and called for 'Russian wisdom' in foreign policy.
But Mr Simion distanced himself from the views of the candidate he previously supported, telling The Telegraph that he believes 'Russia is a geopolitical enemy' and that he is 'in favour of Nato bases'.
The controversy surrounding the presidential election has caused tensions between Romania and the Trump administration in the United States, an opening Mr Simion has attempted to harness.
Elon Musk was a vocal supporter of Mr Georgescu and supported Mr Simion's protests against his prosecutors.
At his Munich Security Conference speech, JD Vance, the US vice-president, cited the Romanian election annulment as evidence that the 'retreat' from free speech and the 'enemy within' is a greater threat to European democracy than external actors like Russia.
'The speech of Mr Vance was an ointment to our souls because we want justice, we want free elections, we want democracy', Mr Simion said.
It comes as a growing rift has emerged between Europe and the United States since Mr Vance's conference speech and Zelensky's disastrous White House meeting with Donald Trump last month. The European Union has pursued rearmament in an attempt to reduce reliance on the Americans.
When asked about Sir Keir Starmer's proposal of a peacekeeping force of British and French troops in Ukraine, which Mr Vance appeared to denigrate earlier this month, Mr Simion said 'we don't have a European peacekeeping force that is effective', and added that a European army outside Nato could not work.
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