The Russian invasion of Ukraine has increased rivalry between the great powers and made Switzerland, the base of many international organizations, a hub for Russian and Chinese espionage, Swiss intelligence officials said.
“Russia has destroyed the rules-based peace order in Europe,” the Swiss information services (SRC, acronym in French) note in their annual report published this Monday.
The SRC is also responsible for counterintelligence in Switzerland.
This Russian-induced devastation has “returned the effectiveness of international fora for the promotion of peace and collective security, such as the UN and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), and a new stable world order is not in sight.” on the horizon,” say Swiss intelligence.
Added to this is the tendency “towards a bipolar world order, characterized by systemic rivalry between the United States and China,” said the Swiss.
Therefore, “foreign espionage activities, mainly Russian and Chinese, continue to pose a major threat to Switzerland,” the report said.
Partly because of its role as a host country for many international organizations, “Switzerland is among the European countries to which a large number of members of the Russian intelligence services have been sent under diplomatic cover”.
“Of the approximately 220 people accredited as diplomatic or technical-administrative officers at the Russian missions in Geneva and Bern, at least a third probably still work for the Russian intelligence services,” said Christian Dussey, head of Swiss intelligence services at a conference. Press.
Swiss intelligence services have only 450 employees.
Geneva is home to the European headquarters of the United Nations, as well as the headquarters of many UN agencies. It is also in Switzerland that hundreds of diplomats regularly gather to participate in the various annual meetings of these bodies.
According to the report, there are so many opportunities for a spy to blend in, make contacts and gather information in a city that is also home to many financiers, economic and political leaders.
Switzerland’s tenure on the UN Security Council — since January 2023 and for the first time in its history — “increases the threat posed by spying on Swiss people” who work on broken Security Council cases, the report said.
The Swiss inevitably became targets for espionage, according to the document.
The war in Ukraine also forces the SRC to focus on regions it does not track to prevent Russia from circumventing laws banning arms exports, depending on companies based in the Eurasian Economic Union, as well as in Turkey or India.
Dussey was cautious about the lessons to be learned from this weekend’s uprising by the mercenaries of the Wagner group commanded by their leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin.
“It’s a big internal challenge” for Russia, he said.
The instability of a nuclear power is inevitably a cause for concern, which explains the reactions of Western countries, the head of Swiss secrets added.
Source: DN
