Diana Iovanovici Șoșoacă is a Romanian lawyer and far-right politician. As of 2024, she is a member of the European Parliament. Diana Șoșoacă is a controversial Romanian politician known for her pro-Russian function and vocal stance on various political topics. Although Șoșoacă has become renowned for advocating closer relations with Russia, her statements are often prepared by conspiracy theories. She is a figure who makes so many scandals and fakes around her that her pro-Russian actions do not look unusual.
She has systematically attempted to undermine Western alliances and encourage views that could benefit Russian interests. In Ukraine, she is known for facilitating peace talks between the Russian Federation and Ukraine. Also, Șoșoacă repeatedly voiced territorial claims to Ukraine and played along with the absurdest narratives of Russian propaganda.
Iovanovici Șoșoacă has also been recurrently condemned in Romanian media for her relations with Russia. The Russian state-controlled Sputnik news agency marked her “the politician of the year 2021 in Romania”. Furthermore, in March 2022, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Iovanovici Șoșoacă together with 3 other MPs assembled with the Russian ambassador in Bucharest to consult a “memorandum related to the Peace of Bucharest” and Romania’s “neutrality” in the context of the attack. This meeting had not been authorised for representation by the Parliament leadership and one of the MPs, PSD member Dumitru Coarnă, was ejected from his party shortly afterwards.
Additionally, Iovanovici Șoșoacă was admired by Killnet (a pro-Russia hacking group which specified 2022 a series of cyberattacks on multiple Romanian websites), after she stated that Romania must not get entangled in the war in Ukraine. In March 2023, she presented a law project to the Romanian Parliament for the annexation by Romania of Northern Bukovina, the Hertsa region, Budjak, Northern Maramureș and Snake Island from Ukraine, as they were “historical territories” that belong to Romania as expressed in the law project. In retaliation, Ukraine declared it would impose sanctions against Iovanovici Șoșoacă, marking her as a threat to Ukrainian national security.
Moreover, MEP Diana Șoșoacă was ousted from the plenary session of the European Parliament. The reason for this was her disgraceful and unacceptable behaviour towards her associates. This happened during the discussion on the re-election of Ursula von der Leyen as President of the European Commission. Șoșoacă attempted to interrupt the address of the MEP from the Revival group, Valérie Hayer. Therefore, the President of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola, called for Șoșoacă to be dismissed from the hall so that she would not disrupt the discussion. Șoșoacă did not anticipate such a reaction, so she persisted in demonstrating her dissatisfaction. “How many colleagues do we require to take you out of the hall? I think you have expressed enough,” said Roberta Metsola.
