Bucharest
Reuters
 — 

Eurosceptic George Simion won the first round of Romania’s presidential election rerun on Sunday, partial results showed, after a ballot seen as a test of the rise of Donald Trump-style nationalism in the European Union.

Ballots from nearly 98% of voting stations showed Bucharest Mayor Nicusor Dan, 55, was in second place at around 21%, behind Simion’s 40%. They will meet in a runoff on May 18, if final results confirm the reading after diaspora votes are counted.

A Simion victory could isolate the country, erode private investment and destabilize NATO’s eastern flank, where Ukraine is fighting a three-year-old Russian invasion, political observers say.

It would also expand a cohort of eurosceptic leaders in the EU that already includes the Hungarian and Slovak prime ministers at a time when Europe is struggling to formulate its response to Trump.

“This is not just an electoral victory, it is a victory of Romanian dignity. It is the victory of those who have not lost hope, of those who still believe in Romania, a free, respected, sovereign country,” Simion said.

Benefiting from a wave of popular anger against mainstream leaders, Simion, 38, opposes military aid to neighboring Ukraine, is critical of the EU leadership and says he is aligned with the US president’s Make America Great Again movement.

An independent running on an anti-corruption platform, Dan, 55, overtook former senator Crin Antonescu, 65, a centrist candidate backed by the three parties in the pro-western coalition government for his spot in the runoff.

He won substantial support among Romanians abroad – who have favored anti-establishment candidates such him and Simion in recent years – votes from 80% of ballot boxes showed, winning 26%, to Simion’s 59% and Antonescu’s 7%.

Observers said he would struggle to beat Simion in the runoff more than Antonescu due to rivalries between him and mainstream parties that make it harder for voters to switch.

“Eyes on the West, I believe that this is what the campaign should be about, about keeping the Western direction in Romania,” Dan told reporters on Sunday evening.

“… (and) understandably explaining to the people at home the shortcomings we had in our relations with these institutions. They came rather from our own fault in not being active and prepared.”

Sunday’s vote came five months after a first attempt to hold the election was cancelled because of alleged Russian interference in favor of far-right frontrunner Calin Georgescu, since banned from standing again.

Simion who only scored 14% then appears to have ridden an upswell of support for the far-right drummed by Georgescu.

On Sunday, he voted alongside Georgescu, who called the election a “fraud” and urged people to take their country back. As dozens of people thronged outside the voting station chanting “Calin for president,” Simion said his vote was “to restore democracy”.

“It’s possible the diaspora vote will be enough to push Dan into the run-off,” said Sergiu Miscoiu, a political science professor at Babes-Bolyai University. “But Dan may have a harder time against Simion.”

Simion is not the only MAGA-style politician seeking election in central Europe. Karol Nawrocki, the presidential candidate backed by Poland’s main nationalist opposition party in a presidential election on May 18, met the US president this week.

“Romania and Poland are two important countries for the United States,” Simion told Reuters on Friday.

“We represent partners and we represent allies, both military and politically, to the current (US) administration. This is why it is important for MAGA presidents to be in charge in Bucharest and Warsaw.”

Romania’s president has a semi-executive role that includes commanding the armed forces and chairing the security council that decides on military aid. But Simion has said that, if elected, he could seek to elevate Georgescu to some kind of a leadership role.

Observers say the country’s leftist-led governing coalition might buckle if Simion becomes president.

To date, Romania has donated a Patriot air defense battery to Kyiv, is training Ukrainian fighter pilots and has enabled the export of 30 million metric tons of Ukrainian grain through its Black Sea port of Constanta since Russia’s invasion.

The country’s president can also veto important EU votes and appoints the prime minister, chief judges, prosecutors and secret service heads.

The Trump administration has accused Romania of suppressing political opposition and lacking democratic values after November’s election was canceled on what Vice President JD Vance called “flimsy evidence.”

This story has been updated with additional information.

Moscow
Reuters
 — 

President Vladimir Putin said in remarks published on Sunday that Russia had sufficient strength and resources to take the war in Ukraine to its logical conclusion, though he hoped that there would be no need to use nuclear weapons.

Putin ordered thousands of Russian troops into Ukraine in February 2022, triggering Europe’s biggest ground conflict since World War Two and the largest confrontation between Moscow and the West since the depths of the Cold War.

Hundreds of thousands of soldiers have been killed or injured and US President Donald Trump has repeatedly said he wants to end the “bloodbath” that his administration casts as a proxy war between the United States and Russia.

In a film by state television about Putin’s quarter of a century as Russia’s paramount leader entitled “Russia, Kremlin, Putin, 25 years,” Putin was asked by a reporter about the risk of nuclear escalation from the Ukraine war.

“They wanted to provoke us so that we made mistakes,” Putin said, speaking beside a portrait of Tsar Alexander III, a 19th century conservative who suppressed dissent. “There has been no need to use those weapons … and I hope they will not be required.”

“We have enough strength and means to bring what was started in 2022 to a logical conclusion with the outcome Russia requires.”

Trump has been signaling for weeks that he is frustrated by the failure of Moscow and Kyiv to reach terms to end the war, though the Kremlin has said that the conflict is so complicated that the rapid progress Washington wants is difficult.

Former US President Joe Biden, Western European leaders and Ukraine cast the invasion as an imperial-style land grab and repeatedly vowed to defeat Russian forces, which control about a fifth of Ukraine.

Putin portrays the war as a watershed moment in Moscow’s relations with the West, which he says humiliated Russia after the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 by enlarging NATO and encroaching on what he considers Moscow’s sphere of influence.

Trump has warned that the conflict could develop into World War Three. Former CIA Director William Burns has said there was a real risk in late 2022 that Russia could use nuclear weapons against Ukraine, an assertion dismissed by Moscow.

Putin, a former KGB lieutenant colonel who was handed the presidency on the last day of 1999 by an ailing Boris Yeltsin, is the longest serving Kremlin leader since Josef Stalin, who ruled for 29 years until his death in 1953.

Russian dissidents – most now either in jail or abroad – see Putin as a dictator who has built a brittle system of personal rule reliant on sycophancy and corruption that is leading Russia towards decline and turmoil.

Supporters cast Putin, who Russian pollsters say has approval ratings of above 85%, as a savior who pushed back against an arrogant West and put an end to the chaos which accompanied the 1991 disintegration of the Soviet Union.

In the carefully choreographed state television film, which gave viewers a rare look behind the notoriously closed life of the Russian president, Putin was shown offering chocolates and a fermented Russian milk drink to Pavel Zarubin, a top Kremlin correspondent, in his private Kremlin kitchen.

Putin said that he first knelt in prayer during the 2002 Nord-Ost Moscow theater crisis, when Chechen militants took over 900 people hostage. More than 130 hostages were killed.

“I don’t feel like some kind of politician,” Putin said of his 25 years in power as president and prime minister.

“I continue to breathe the very same air as millions of Russian citizens. It is very important. God willing that it continues as long as possible. And that it doesn’t disappear.”

Paris
CNN
 — 

French police rescued the father of a cryptocurrency entrepreneur from his kidnappers Saturday night, but found he’d had one of his fingers severed – the latest in a spate of abductions tied to cryptocurrency.

The victim, who has not been publicly identified, was forced into a van by four men wearing ski masks on a street of Paris Thursday morning. He was held hostage in an Airbnb 12 miles south of the French capital for two days before being rescued.

The kidnappers contacted the victim’s son, sending a video of the mutilated victim and demanding millions of euros in ransom money, according to CNN affiliate BFM TV.

Five people between the ages of 23 and 27 were brought into police custody following the raid, according to the Paris Prosecutor’s office.

The kidnapping shares striking similarities with other recent kidnappings tied to crypto currency in France and surrounding countries.

In January 2025, David Balland, cofounder of the crypto wallet company Ledger, was kidnapped with his wife from their home in central France.

Before the couple was freed by police, the assailants cut off Balland’s finger, sending a video of the severed appendage to his business partner Eric Larchevêque and demanding ransom money.

In December 2024, the wife of crypto investor and influencer Stéphane Winkel was kidnapped from the couple’s home in Belgium. She was rescued after her kidnapper crashed his car in a dramatic police chase, Winkel wrote in a post on X.

It is unclear whether the recent spate of crypto kidnappings are connected or not.

“Obviously there’s at least a link in the modus operandi. Now, whether it’s the same team or not is for the investigators to say.” said internal security expert Guillaume Farde speaking on French television Sunday.

Police have opened an investigation into the latest kidnapping, including for extortion by an organized gang and criminal conspiracy, the Paris Prosecutor’s office told CNN.