Switzerland overrun with foreign spies, Swiss intelligence service warns
June 28, 2023 1 Comment
INTENSIFYING COMPETITION BETWEEN THE superpowers has turned Switzerland into an espionage battlefield, with more foreign spies being active there than in most other European countries, according to a new report. The report, published earlier this week by the Swiss Federal Intelligence Service (FIS), notes that Russian operatives are particularly active in the alpine country. Many Russian intelligence officers have relocated there after being expelled by a host of European countries in the past 18 months, according to the report.
Traditionally neutral Switzerland has not joined most other European countries in expelling Russian intelligence officers —posing as diplomats— following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Therefore, as Russia tries to rebuild its shattered intelligence-gathering networks in Europe, it is using Switzerland as a forward-operating base, according to the FIS. As of 2023, the number of Russian intelligence personnel stationed on Swiss soil, and the ensuing espionage activity, “is notably high”, states the report.
According to the FIS report, that the lion’s share of Russian intelligence officers —“several dozen”— are stationed “at the Russian diplomatic and consular missions in Geneva”. A major international diplomatic hub, Geneva is an “ideal operational environment” for foreign intelligence agencies. It hosts a significant number of international organizations —including one of the four major offices of the United Nations. Additionally, it is situated close to the largely unmonitored French border. This allows intelligence operatives to move seamlessly in and out of European Union soil.
Furthermore, as Western intelligence agencies increase their presence in Switzerland, in order to counter Russian intelligence activities there, “espionage levels […] are continuously rising”, according to the FIS report. This situation is unlikely to change in the coming year, as “intensifying competition between superpowers” is expected to continue to involve Switzerland as an espionage battlefield that draws in rival intelligence agencies, the FIS report concludes.
► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 28 June 2023 | Permalink
intelNews.org 
This article made me laugh to myself, I must admit. I was stationed in Berne during the seventies when it was the largest congregation of Chinese intelligence officers in the world outside of Beijing, When I returned to Switzerland as a tourist recently, even in ‘overcover’ (retirement), it was clear that Zug, near to Lucerne, had an overabundance of Russians, of which anybody with half a brain would assume had its fair share of spies among them, as does all of their communities globally. And in Geneva it’s the same with other nations’ spooks! The Swiss have always turned a blind eye to such things and are well practiced in hypocrisy.