Far-right candidate takes shock lead in Romania election

Romania has been a staunch ally of Ukraine since Russia’s full scale invasion, but it has just voted for an anti-Nato, Putin-praising hard-right presidential candidate.

In a shock result, Calin Georgescu is leading in the first round of the presidential election.

Krishnan Guru-Murthy speaks to Sir Tony Brenton, a former ambassador to Russia.

Krishnan Guru-Murthy: If you’re sitting in Ukraine, are you looking at the ground around you and thinking it’s not as firm as you thought?

Sir Tony Brenton: Well, yes, certainly. I mean, the war doesn’t seem to be going very well for them. The election of Trump has been presented as a disaster. It’s not entirely clear, but it may be. And you’ve just pointed to this election in Romania, which actually succeeds the rise of the far right in a fair number of EU countries. And the far right in general is much more sympathetic to Russia than to Ukraine.

Krishnan Guru-Murthy: So any idea that, were America to carry through with any sort of threat to scale down its support for Ukraine – would result in Europe stepping into the breach, is looking a lot less certain, isn’t it?

Sir Tony Brenton: That’s a very good question. And I think European leaders are discussing it rather intensely at the moment. And the question is, can they have the adequate force to fill a US sized gap in support for Ukraine? And even if they have, can they coordinate adequately to do it? I don’t know the answer to that question. I detect a lot of anxiety on the part of everybody. The talks between France and the UK yesterday were an illustration of determination to at least test out the possibility.

Krishnan Guru-Murthy: Can you interpret the British position for us for a moment? I mean, is it as straightforward as it seems, that Britain will support Ukraine to the end and believes that Ukraine should fight its way to victory?

Sir Tony Brenton: Yes, I think it is. But we were in the lead when the war started. We’ve been in the lead in getting the EU and the wider West to supply Ukraine with weapons and the rest of it. I think British ministers and the British establishment rather pride themselves on the role that we’ve played. The downside is that we are now very high on Russia’s list of number one enemies. And for example, this unfortunate man, James Anderson, who’s just fallen into Russian hands, we have rather limited means to to get him out. And there must be a certain amount of pessimism. Frankly, as I watch the atmosphere, which I do quite closely here, I watched a number of distinguished commentators like Lord Dannatt move away from the flak position: ‘we must back Ukraine in all terms,’ to a much more nuanced position. Yes, we need to get talks going. Yes, Ukraine needs to talk and yes, Ukraine needs to think about making territorial compromises to bring the war to an end.

Krishnan Guru-Murthy: So what do you make of these rumours coming out of France that there have been discussions between Britain and France about sending troops to Ukraine, possibly in some sort of training role or who knows what else?

Sir Tony Brenton: Yeah. Now, we need an awful lot of troops in Ukraine in order to make a serious difference to the situation on the ground. Things feel to me to be moving slightly too rapidly against Ukraine for a serious training role to make a huge amount of difference now. And my instinct is that we are on the route towards negotiations. It’s pretty clear the sort of landing area that those negotiations are going to be pointing towards, which include Ukrainian territorial concessions. And if Trump plays his cards right, he will achieve a major diplomatic triumph in getting us there, ending the war, which Biden has solidly backed for the last two and a half years and will feel pretty good about himself. Now, the trick, however, is to do that without completely abandoning Ukraine. The way things are going, Ukraine will come out of this, yes, perhaps having agreed to a ceasefire, which leaves a lot of land in Russian hands, even though they don’t formally concede it. And leaves Ukraine feeling rather bruised by it all. But also leaves Ukraine as a Western oriented state linked to the West. Prospects, not immediately, but in the longer term of Nato membership, of EU membership. So essentially actually having won the war. But we’re not there yet. A lot of this is going to depend upon, how can I put this, Trump’s diplomatic sophistication as the negotiations get going. And it has to be said that diplomatic sophistication is not something that Trump is famous for.