\n<\/p>\n
Romania’s constitutional court\u00a0annulled the presidential election<\/a> in December 2024 after allegations emerged of Russian meddling in favour of far-right candidate Calin Georgescu, who unexpectedly won the first round after shooting to prominence virtually overnight. On February 26, 2025, Romania indicted<\/a> Georgescu on charges including making “false statements” over his campaign financing and starting a “fascist, racist or xenophobic organisation”. Georgescu denies wrongdoing. The election is to be rerun in May.<\/p>\n Tens of thousands of Romanians took to the streets in subsequent months to protest the cancellation of the vote. On March 1,\u00a0thousands again gathered<\/a> in the centre of Bucharest in support of Georgescu.<\/p>\n An 11-second clip of a huge crowd of demonstrators began circulating among Greek social media users soon after with the claim that it showed a pro-Georgescu rally in the Romanian capital.<\/p>\n “The Romanian people turn their backs on the neo-class elite in Brussels and choose Putin. The Romanian capital Bucharest was overrun by millions of demonstrators chanting ‘Russia’ and supporting pro-Russian presidential candidate Georgescu, who was recently illegally arrested at the request of the EU president,” reads\u00a0a post on X<\/a> from March 3, 2025 that has accumulated over 39,000 views.<\/p>\n The same video with the same claim was also shared on Facebook in Greek here <\/a>and here<\/a>.<\/p>\n However, these claims are false. The video was filmed in Thessaloniki on February 28, 2025, when hundreds of thousands of people rallied in cities across Greece to mark the second anniversary of the train crash in Tempe, in central Greece, that claimed the lives of 57 people.<\/p>\n