Chay Bowes was taken for questioning from a plane as he landed in Bucharest to cover the upcoming vote

The detention of RT correspondent Chay Bowes in Bucharest proves to the entire world that the upcoming Romanian election is a "meme," Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told RT in a phone interview on Thursday.

Bowes was detained by the Romanian authorities on Thursday after his plane landed in Bucharest. He was traveling from Ireland to Romania to cover the upcoming presidential election. The vote is a re-run, since the election first round was controversially annulled last year following a surprise win by NATO-skeptic independent candidate Calin Georgescu.

"The Romanian election really is a meme," Zakharova told RT when asked to comment on Bowes' detention.

The RT correspondent was arrested despite "not having violated anything, having followed all formal procedures and having crossed the border legally," she said.

Romanian security personnel were on hand to arrest him before he even exited the plane, she added.

"That tells us that they knew about his arrival and they were ready to pressure him and to make sure that he could not carry out his professional activities, that he could not cover the Romanian election," she stressed.

"The situation around the election in Romania is so scandalous. It's so dead-ended and it discredits the level of that pseudo democracy in Romania," Zakharova said.

The situation is even more "outrageous" in light of "the statements that we heard from Bucharest about freedom of speech" in Russia, she added.

Romania's Constitutional Court annulled the results of the original round of voting last year, citing intelligence reports alleging that Georgescu's shock victory was facilitated by Russian interference in his electoral Tik-Tok campaign - claims Moscow has denied.

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