Espionage in Switzerland is “thriving” as Russian agents increase their presence in the neutral country following a wave of expulsions from neighboring European countries, spy chiefs in Bern have warned.
In an unclassified report released on Monday, the Swiss Federal Intelligence Service (FIS) said that Geneva, the country’s diplomatic center, had become a major European center for secret government activities with “high levels of espionage and ever-increasing”.
Switzerland is an outsider in Western Europe, as it has so far not expelled diplomats or agents in connection with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The number of Russian intelligence officers in the country is “particularly high,” the Bern-based FIS said.[We] they believe that several dozen officials work at Russia’s diplomatic and consular missions in Geneva.
The FIS, which is highly regarded for its counterintelligence by larger European counterparts, previously estimated that more than a quarter of Russian diplomats working in Switzerland are intelligence agents.
Geneva is a particularly attractive center, the FIS said, due to the large number of international organizations such as the UN based in the city and its proximity to the French border, which allows foreign agents to cross unchecked into European territory from Switzerland.
The city provides the “ideal operating environment” for spies, the report added.
The FIS said that “many” of the Geneva-based agents are undercover agents – people trained to hire, exploit and manipulate targets working in organizations of interest to gather sensitive information from them.
Each manipulator typically works with between three and five secret sources, the FIS said, adding that it believes it has “often” been able to identify and monitor the recruitment of sources into Swiss territory by foreign agents.
“Apart from intelligence officers, there are many suspected sources and supporters of foreign intelligence services living and working in Geneva and the surrounding area. It is also known that retired and (officially) former foreign intelligence officers have settled in Geneva and the surrounding area with their families, “the FIS report said.
In 2019, the work of the open source investigative website Bellingcat identified Geneva as the probable operational center of Russian military intelligence (GRU) operatives responsible for the assassination attempt on Sergei Skripal, a former Russian spy, in Britain in 2018.
City-based GRU operatives are also linked to attempts to infiltrate the internal systems of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons and the World Anti-Doping Agency, a sports organization.
Recommended
The FIS predicts that “increasing competition between superpowers” means that espionage on Swiss soil will continue to grow. Russia is one of the agency’s main focuses, especially as Moscow seeks to rebuild its intelligence-gathering capacity in Europe.
In response to the invasion of Ukraine launched by President Vladimir Putin in February, European countries collectively expelled hundreds of Russian undercover agents, causing severe damage to Kremlin spy ships in the west.
Switzerland must “[utilise] in full “all the legal instruments it can to prevent the country from becoming an even more attractive refuge for Russian agents as a result, the FIS warned.
Add Comment