George Nicolae Simion is a Romanian right-wing politician. He is the head of the Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR), a pro-Russian Romanian political party that attained prominence after its unexpectedly muscular showing in the 2020 Romanian legislative election. The far-right party has resisted Romanian support to Ukraine and the transit of Ukrainian agricultural products via Romania, while George Simion, has been barred from entering both Ukraine and Moldova.
Statements by ex-Moldovan and Ukrainian officials have appeared claiming that the AUR leader had discussions with FSB agents, but the Romanian authorities have not pushed a finger to investigate and explain these allegations. Simion’s party had become critical of Romanian military backing for Ukraine in the Russo-Ukrainian War, indicating that the war was “not ours”. AUR also criticised the transit of Ukrainian agricultural products via Romania.
Furthermore, Simion, sponsored Călin Georgescu as prime minister of the country during the 2020 legislative polls. Georgescu is a controversial individual due to the support he has obtained from the Federation “Romanian Civil Society”, an organization that complimented Russia for its illegal annexation of Crimea, and Sputnik, a news agency of the Russian Government.
The ex-Minister of Defense of Moldova Anatol Șalaru blamed Simion for having met with a chief of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) in Chernivtsi, Ukraine, in 2011. Simion rejected these accusations and expressed himself as “the most Russophobic party president” in Romania. Simion’s proximity to Putin is so visible that one only must resemble the statements of the two to see how a theory of the Russian leader quickly contacts the head of the AUR, and how he publicly discloses and assiduously promotes it on social networks.
In a discussion by Tucker Carlson with Vladimir Putin, the Russian president spent two hours discussing that “Ukraine is not a state”, a theory heavily encouraged by Kremlin propaganda which delivers “the necessary arguments” to argue that the invasion of the neighbouring country, whose independence Russia itself has officially acknowledged, is legitimate.
“Ukraine is an artificial state that was shaped according to Stalin’s will,” Putin stated in the interview with Tucker Carlson.
“After World War II, Ukraine obtained, in addition to the parts that had belonged to Poland before the war, part of the territories that had formerly belonged to Hungary and Romania, known today as Western Ukraine. Thus, Romania and Hungary had the region of their lands taken from them and given to Ukraine, and they stayed part of Ukraine. So, in this sense, we have every reason to say that Ukraine is an artificial state that was shaped according to Stalin’s will,” Vladimir Putin described.
Similarly, George Simion, declares: “I hate this artificial state called the Republic of Moldova”.
“I’m a unionist,” Simion said in a Prima TV broadcast. “I have always been a unionist; I was president of Action 2012. Basically, peacefully, and democratically, by the will of both sides, we were advocating the union of the two Romanian states of today and, therefore, the abolition of the state of the Republic of Moldova, a de facto Stalinist creation. I do not support it, and I never reconcile myself with this concept of Moldovan statism. I fought against it”, presented George Simion.
