EXCLUSIVE: Calin Georgescu’s ties to Putin’s campaign manager exposed in Austrian radio debate

A debate held two days ago on Russia’s hybrid war, attended by a military official from Vienna and broadcast on one of Austria’s national public radio stations—ÖRF—also spotlighted the connections between Calin Georgescu (former Romanian presidential candidate, November 2024) and Elena Vladimirovna Shmelova (a close associate of Russian President Vladimir Putin and his 2018 campaign manager).

Shmelova is currently under international sanctions for supporting Russia’s war against Ukraine. These ties—which revolve around a controversial German businessman previously convicted and reportedly a mentor and financial backer of Georgescu—are believed to have taken place between 2012 and 2022, during Georgescu’s residence in Austria. This morning, the expert who made these revelations during the radio broadcast provided G4Media.ro with evidence supporting these claims.

The debate, aired live by ÖRF, focused on Russia’s hybrid warfare across Europe. Moderator Johannes Kaup hosted Colonel Markus Reisner (from Vienna’s Institute for Security Research and Crisis Management) and Cornelius Granig (a cybersecurity expert, president of the Media and Journalism Taskforce, Transparency International, and the University Institute for Security Research at Sigmund Freud University in Vienna). Granig has direct experience in Romania, where he has run or currently operates several businesses, including in the media sector.

During the debate, Granig discussed Russia’s hybrid warfare activities in Romania and mentioned Calin Georgescu, who had lived in Austria until 2021–2022. Contacted hours later by G4Media.ro, Granig stated:

“In my research on Russia’s hybrid war against Europe, Romania is a key case, especially since your country’s highest court (Romania’s Constitutional Court) confirmed Russian influence in the November 2024 presidential elections, and Mr. Calin Georgescu was banned from continuing his candidacy.”

He provided G4Media.ro with documentation which, he claims, shows “close links between Mr. Georgescu’s entourage and Vladimir Putin.”

While in Austria, Georgescu was an associate of Roland Schatz, a businessman described in a February 2025 U.S. investigation as Georgescu’s “mentor and financial backer” during that period. After 1985, Schatz established multiple firms under the “Innovatio” and “Media Tenor” brands in various countries, focusing on media influence. A controversial figure in Germany, Schatz was convicted in Bonn in July 2010 of embezzlement, bankruptcy fraud, theft of employee social security and pension contributions, and filing false declarations.

Through Media Tenor GMBH, Schatz publicized Georgescu’s activities in Austria. One 2016 article from the company highlights Georgescu’s participation in a Media Tenor event at the World Economic Forum in Davos, where he was cited as executive director of the UN Global Sustainability Index Institute—an organization founded and chaired by Schatz.

An Austrian commercial registry shows that Media Tenor GMBH was incorporated in Vienna in 2015, with Schatz as CEO and sole shareholder being the Swiss firm Innovatio Verlags AG, which also belongs to him.

However, a similarly named company, Media Tenor, had existed in St. Petersburg, Russia, since 2005 with the same focus on media. Its sole shareholder was Innovatio Editions SA (the former name of Innovatio Verlags AG), also led by Schatz.

Media Tenor, the UN Global Sustainability Index Institute, and Innovatio shared neighboring addresses in Vienna—Linke Wienzeile 29/9 (Media Tenor and Innovatio) and 29/9A (UN Global).

Although the Russian Media Tenor is now dissolved, it was co-owned by Schatz (52%) and Elena Vladimirovna Shmelova (10%), who also served as the company’s CEO.

Shmelova is currently CEO of two Russian organizations: “Talent and Success” (Талант и Успех) and the “Federal Territory Council ‘Sirius’” (Совет Федеральной Территории „Сириус”), which oversee an education center visited by President Putin, according to a Kremlin statement from October 2023. Another photograph, dated March 15, 2021, taken by state news agency TASS, shows Shmelova with Putin at the Kremlin.

She managed Putin’s 2018 presidential campaign and is under European Union sanctions for her close ties to the Russian president. Specifically, she co-chairs the central office of All-Russia People’s Front (a pro-Putin political coalition), which supports the war in Ukraine—including through the “Everyone for Victory!” campaign that collects donations for military units in the so-called “Donetsk People’s Republic” and “Luhansk People’s Republic.”

Shmelova also heads the “Talent and Success” foundation and the Sirius Federal Territory Council, where she coordinates with the “Donetsk People’s Republic” authorities on opening Russian educational centers in the region. According to EU documents, she is complicit in policies that undermine Ukraine’s territorial integrity and sovereignty.

EU-sanctioned entity registries confirm her ties to the Russian Media Tenor.

Context

Romanian intelligence services (SRI – Serviciul Român de Informații) identified Russia as responsible for sophisticated cyberattacks on Romania’s electoral infrastructure during the November 2024 presidential elections, according to a May 3 investigation by French outlet Mediapart (a publication specializing in investigative journalism).

Over 85,000 cyberattacks were launched from 33 different countries, reportedly coordinated by SVR, Russia’s foreign intelligence service, led by Sergei Naryshkin, a close ally of Vladimir Putin. According to Mediapart, Russia’s aim was to install a preferred candidate—Calin Georgescu—into the second round of elections and secure 30% of parliamentary seats.

The interference operation had reportedly been in planning since 2023, initially backing another sovereigntist figure, Diana Șoșoacă, and later Georgescu. A large-scale astroturfing campaign on TikTok promoted Georgescu, using 25,000 coordinated accounts to manipulate the algorithm and elevate him from under 1% polling to 23% in the first round.

More than 130 influencers with a combined audience of 8 million followers were mobilized to indirectly promote Georgescu via vague videos about the “ideal candidate,” with comment sections saturated with pro-Georgescu messages.

After the Constitutional Court of Romania annulled the elections, Russia launched a disinformation campaign branding the decision as a “coup d’état,” aiming to erode public trust in democratic institutions— a strategy seen in other European states as well.

According to SRI, the most incriminating evidence was the cyberattacks on the servers hosting the presidential election system—a massive, highly advanced operation. The attackers employed sophisticated anonymization methods, making them nearly untraceable.

However, what SRI did not make public—and what Mediapart now reveals—is that Romanian intelligence successfully attributed one of the breaches (targeting a mapping server) to APT29 (aka “Cozy Bear” or “The Dukes”), a hacking group operated by the SVR. This group should not be confused with APT28, run by Russia’s military intelligence (GRU), which was blamed for the MacronLeaks incident in France.

APT29 was behind the 2016 DNC email hack in the United States presidential elections.

Mediapart reports that Romanian intelligence gathered evidence proving the Kremlin’s large-scale election interference strategy was formulated and activated in late 2023.

Russia’s primary objective: install a sovereigntist politician in Romania’s runoff election, and ensure a minimum 30% representation in the subsequent parliamentary vote.