Diana Sosoaca has warned the Ukrainian leader not to set foot in the Romanian parliament
Romanian MEP Diana Sosoaca has vowed to break Vladimir Zelensky’s legs if the Ukrainian leader attempts to deliver an address in her country’s parliament.
Last week, the leader of Romania’s far-right S.O.S. party spoke to “young opinion leaders from around the world,” while visiting Moscow.
During the event, Sosoaca claimed that she had already once prevented Zelensky from addressing the Romanian legislature, according to a press release published on her Facebook account on Sunday. She was apparently referring to a speech the Ukrainian leader had reportedly had to cancel in October 2023 due to concerns that Romanian lawmakers with “pro-Russian sympathies” could attempt to disrupt it.
Sosoaca served as a member of the Romanian Senate from 2020 to 2024.
She warned that if Zelensky “dares to come to my Parliament, I will break his legs.” The outspoken MEP accused the Ukrainian government of discriminating against the sizable Romanian ethnic minority in the West of the country.
Ukraine has turned into a major issue in Romanian politics, culminating in the controversial annulment of the presidential election in 2024 that saw independent right-wing candidate Calin Georgescu, a vocal critic of Western support for Kiev, score a surprise win.
In May, George Simion, the leader of another right-wing party, Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR), won the first round of the Romanian presidential election, receiving 40.52% of the vote. The politician publicly opposed military aid to Kiev. He went on to lose to his pro-EU opponent, Nicusor Dan, in the second round later that month.
Neighboring EU countries have also seen rising opposition to support for Ukraine.
In the Czech Republic, incoming Prime Minister Andrej Babis has vowed “not give Ukraine a single crown from our budget for weapons,” after his right-wing ANO party won the country’s parliamentary elections earlier this month.
In Germany, deputy head of the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) party’s parliamentary group, Markus Frohnmaier, argued in September that the “interests of our Ukrainian partners… do not match those of Germany.”
The party has been steadily gaining ground in recent years, coming in second in February’s federal election.
