If Georgescu wins:

Romania could soon stop aid to Ukraine

Calin Georgescu will run against the pro-European conservative opposition leader Elena Lasconi in a run-off election next Sunday.(Bild: APA/AFP/Mihai Barbu)

The far-right Romanian presidential candidate Calin Georgescu wants to end support for Ukraine if he wins the election. He is also holding out the prospect of an end to Ukrainian grain exports currently passing through his country. 

Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Romania has exported millions of tons of Ukrainian grain via its Black Sea port of Constanta, trained fighter pilots from the neighbouring country and provided the government in Kiev with a Patriot air defence battery. All this will stop if he wins, Georgescu said in an interview with the Reuters news agency.

A tanker loaded with rapeseed in the Black Sea port of Constanta(Bild: APA/AFP/Daniel MIHAILESCU)

NATO spending target "does not interest me"
"It is unimaginable that a war is taking place next to us in the middle of Europe, so it will definitely be a priority that this war in Ukraine must be stopped immediately," said the surprising winner of the first round of the presidential elections. When asked about meeting the NATO spending target, he said: "It's completely irrelevant, I'm not even interested in it."

Georgescu is considered an admirer of the old and new US President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly emphasized that Europeans must pay for their own security and that he acts according to the principle of "America first".