Romania's current president is an international math olympic with two gold medals. We'll see how he turns out as a president. He's inherited quite some pressing issues and the President doesn't have all that much power. The parties made sure to neuter that institution. The alternative was a footbal hooligan with allegedly Russian funding behind him and a right wing discourse. Society is very polarised. Nearly half voted for the hooligan. Before, in the cancelled elections they voted for a nutcake Russian funded secret service puppet with a nicely sounding discourse void of any actual content and a very ballsy but quite dim witted woman, mayor in a small town. The Russians bet their money on multiple trojan horses, just in case one of them gets disqualified.

OTOH I am very impressed with how Volodymir Zelenski turned out. Who would have thought?

> OTOH I am very impressed with how Volodymir Zelenski turned out. Who would have thought?

He played his cards so well that Ukraine now has 100k dead people, another 300k injured, so much destroyed infrastructure and so many cities turned into battlegrounds. Yes, "impressive".

I am not saying he's to "blame" for this, but being "very impressed" is weird to me as well — whether it was possible to play the fine line between sovereignty and compromise I don't know, but I can certainly see less costly middle ground.

What would have impressed me was to have gotten Ukraine into EU, yet committed not to join the NATO and figured out a "neutral combat zone" for Eastern Ukraine — keep both Ukraine people and Russia happy, for instance.

Romanians I've spoken to all say they voted for Nicusor Dan because the other candidate(s) were/was so dire.