ForMin Hurezeanu, about the annulment of presidential elections in Romania and the situation in Ukraine

The minister of foreign affairs, Emil Hurezeanu was asked in the programme Political Insider broadcast on Saturday at Prima TV if the foreign diplomats had been interested in the annulment of presidential elections in Romania.   Hurezeanu considers that ‘everybody’ on the international political stage asks why the presidential elections had been annulled in Romania. As answer, the minister of foreign affairs explained to the foreign officials that the annulment decision was not taken ‘following questionable intelligence evidence’ but by decision of the Constitutional Court, the highest judicial court involved in the electoral process.   Similarly, Emil Hurezeanu contradicts the US Vice President, J.D.Vance who criticized the fact that Romania annulled the elections, after in the campaign appeared ‘digital ads worth 100,000 dollars on the part of a foreign country’. ‘ There were not hundreds of thousands of dollars, as Vice President Vance said, there were tens of millions. There were also under radar surfing formulas which exploded’, said the Romanian minister of foreign affairs.   The minister of foreign affairs was also asked what arguments he brought to the foreign officials on the issue of presidential elections cancellation.   "Firstly, that they were not cancelled as a result of questionable evidence from the secret services, but as a result of a decision, a judicial court, a court, which is the highest court. That these elections can hardly be cancelled, that democracy must be left, that it has a free field of functioning, of expression. We are well aware of that, but that there are fractures, there are panes, and then there were arguments. And the arguments were communicated, perhaps not sufficiently to public opinion in the country, but there were enough arguments. It wasn't hundreds of thousands of dollars, as Vice President Vance claimed. It was tens of millions. Then there were under-the-radar surfing formulas that exploded. Both in the case of fake accounts and in the case of manipulated, reactivated accounts, obviously coming from third countries. So all our NATO partners are aware of these things - I am mentioning the Americans, the institutional representatives of the Biden administration, the French and German services, the administrations themselves, and the presidents. President Macron made an additional statement, talking about how the elections in Romania were manipulated", Mr Hurezeanu explained. In connection to the situation in Ukraine, minister Hurezeanu was asked if Romania would send peace troops in Ukraine and he stated: ‘As you know, there is a reservation, not only of ours. It was expressed in Germany as well, in Poland and Spain. I don’t know if they are wanted, the Americans do not want to send troops any more, they don’t want to send ‘our boys’ to an operation theatre. But the Europeans do not know either, how, when, why’.   The minister of foreign affairs said that there were discussions in Paris about sending peace-keeping troops in Ukraine.  ‘It was an idea, one of the possible conclusions of the first group reunion in Paris, tjat, if European troops belonging to NATO member states in operations of peace keeping in Ukraine, in an unexpected situation, they might be covered by article 5, solidarity – all for one, one for all – of the NATO Charter. This conclusion did not stick’ Hurezeanu said.   According to him ‘one of the supplementary dangers of this situation, now as we are talking, is the fluidity of the situation, from all points of view’.   "We don't yet know how it is finalised, whether all the American intentions, maximalist in many respects, remain so. We don't know if they will enter, in a modus vivendi, as I said, into an equation of creating a peace, as everybody wants it, together with the Russians. Nor do we know what the Europeans want in the end. How will they get out of this great endeavour? The fact is that all European meetings now sit under this huge burden, with this spectre of awakening to reality, if I may say so, when it comes to such an important and large entity. So what do we do? Pool resources? When it comes to military budgets, do we have a common defence industry? Do we make a common army? There are still no answers," Mr Hurezeanu added.   According to him, the principles which were observed during the war in Ukraine – sovereignty, integrity and independence of Ukraine – must be observed after the peace process starts. ‘No peace in Ukraine, over the Ukrainians’ head. Not peace between the US and Russia, over the Europeans’ heads’ Hurezeanu said.   Asked if the world would be divided between the US and Russia as it looked in the 1980’s, Emil Hurezeanu explained: ‘Things look like this, at least according to the American point of view, which could be justified, the war must end, a costly and bloody war, as President Trump said and his main collaborators, general Kellogg as well as others’.   "So we have to end this war, because hundreds of thousands of people have died and too much has been said about the war, about a war that, it seems, cannot be won, cannot be lost, that is draining the resources of the United States and its allies, not only the lives of Ukrainians and Russians, because one life is equal to another life, right? And that we need to move on to the stage of peace, we need to talk about peace, a fast forward peace, a peace to which the Russians have adhered, to the simple, fast principles offered by the United States, already with negotiations in Saudi Arabia, with the best Russian negotiators, from Putin's entourage, and with very good American negotiators," Emil Hurezeanu told the programme Insider Politic. "Not a peace in Ukraine over the heads of Ukrainians. Not a peace between the United States and Russia, over the heads of Europeans. With security guarantees that would be our own in the direction of the Ukrainians and to which all sides would agree, so that the danger of a renewed outbreak of war in Ukraine or the spread of war from Ukraine to Europe eventually - there is talk about that too - would not exist or would be prevented," Hurezeanu added.   The American leader, Donald Trump arranged bilateral peace discussions with Russia, excluding the European allies and Ukraine from the negotiations for the end of the war.   The first round of discussions took place on Tuesday in Riad.