Romanian prosecutors have arrested six men on charges of treason for allegedly seeking Russian help for a plot to overthrow the government in Bucharest.
The group, named “Vlad the Impaler Command” after Romania’s medieval ruler who served as inspiration for Bram Stoker’s Dracula, included a 101-year-old retired general named Radu Theodoru, who is known in Romania for his virulent anti-Semitism.
They “repeatedly contacted agents of a foreign power, located both on the territory of Romania and the Russian Federation”, antiterrorism prosecutors and the Romanian domestic spy agency SRI said on Thursday. The men were charged with “crimes of constituting an organised criminal group and treason”, they said.
Two high-ranking Russian diplomats, the military attache and his deputy, were also expelled from Romania on Wednesday after being in contact with the plotters, SRI said.
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“The two Russian diplomats carried out intelligence-gathering actions in areas of strategic interest and took actions to support the group’s anti-constitutional actions,” it added.
The arrests and expulsions come as authorities in Bucharest step up efforts aimed at curtailing Moscow’s attempts to meddle in its domestic politics after the unprecedented move in December to cancel a presidential vote because of alleged Russian influence.
Russia has denied meddling in the election, with its spy agency saying this week that those behind the “attack” on Calin Georgescu, the candidate who allegedly benefited from a Moscow-led campaign, were doing the bidding of the European Union.
Mr Georgescu himself is under criminal investigation for his alleged links to fascist groups and attempting to subvert the constitutional order, which carry a sentence of more than 10 years in prison.
He has denied having benefited from any Russian help, although he declared he spent no money on last year’s campaign.
Romanian authorities have not implicated Mr Georgescu in the alleged plot being prepared by the Vlad the Impaler Command group.
The defendants are accused of discussing with Russian spies Romania’s withdrawal from Nato, the removal of the current constitution and the constitutional order, the dissolution of political parties, as well as “the removal of all employees from state institutions ... the change of the country’s name, flag and anthem”.
Two of the defendants travelled to Moscow in January, where they came into contact with “people willing to support the organisation’s efforts to take over state power in Romania”, prosecutors said.
Mr Theodoru, the retired general, published a book in 2000 called Zionist nazism, in which he claimed that the Holocaust became “the most profitable Jewish business ever”. – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2025
