How Switzerland Is Caught Up In Russia's Propaganda Machine

(MENAFN- Swissinfo) Switzerland's neutrality has not prevented it from becoming the target of fake news and propaganda from Moscow, reports show. An explainer.

Over 20 years of experience in journalism. Graduated from Moscow State University's Faculty of Journalism and the French Press Institute in Paris. Former TV and radio presenter in France and Russia. Areas of expertise: international relations and human rights. Published author. I have interviewed presidents, rock stars and Political prisoners.

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Data shows that there has been a spike in Russian propaganda in Switzerland and about Switzerland since the Russian invasion of Ukraine nearly three years ago.

Russia has formally condemned Switzerland for providing humanitarian support to Ukraine and for hosting Ukrainian refugees. It has also accused Switzerland of losing its neutrality and criticised it for hosting a peace summit last June to which Russia was not invited. Ahead of that summit, Switzerland's government flagged a surge in cyberattacks and foreign disinformation campaigns targeting the country.

An investigation by the Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ) newspaper meanwhile shows that RT – an international news television network funded by the Russian government and formerly known as Russia Today – has increased its coverage of Switzerland ten-fold since the beginning of 2024.

RT's German-language platform now has an entire section dedicated to Switzerland. Headlines on the platform include“Switzerland in the 'Military Schengen' – the end of neutrality?” and“Double standards in Switzerland: 'bad Russians' warmly welcomed as watch buyers”.

Its English-language version received almost ten million views from Switzerland between June 2023 and May 2024, according to SimilarWeb data quoted by InsightnewsExternal link . The German version of the Russian state media outlet received 2.7 million views. The French version received 656,000 views.

“Specifically, when we talk about disinformation, the most obvious example is RT,” says Ilya Yablokov, lecturer in digital journalism and disinformation at the University of Sheffield in the United Kingdom.

Yablokov argues that RT's uniqueness stems from its decision to enter the information space of Western democracies with disinformation, conspiracy theories as well as with a more general offer of sports, politics and culture.

The goal of this propaganda is to undermine trust in Switzerland's traditional neutrality and to discredit the country as a mediator in international conflicts as well as to shape public opinion in favour of Russian perspectives.

Russian propaganda and disinformation get into Switzerland via various channels, including online platforms such as YouTube, TikTok, X, proxy media creation or what is known as the Doppelganger model (fake websites which mimic original ones). Messaging channel Telegram is also a source.

“Chain emails were previously a tool, but this method appears to be losing relevance,” says Vasily Gatov, media analyst and researcher at the USC Center on Communication Leadership and Policy in Los Angeles.

A report by Insightnews External link identified several pro-Russian websites operating in Switzerland. These include – among others – weltwoche, uncutnews, transition-news. Taken as a whole, the sites have a small market share: only 1.4% of the traffic of all Swiss media outlets.

The same report also pointed to propaganda entering Switzerland through France and Germany via sites such as Anti-Spiegel and Réseau International which are often quoted by pro-Russian Swiss websites.

Other methods include the creation of“troll farms” based in Russia or organised from Russia. These spread online disinformation and propaganda by employing people to create millions of provocative or offensive posts, aiming to stir conflict or influence public opinion.

Hacking is also part of Russia's playbook. In late January 2025, pro-Russian hacker group NoName05716 carried out cyberattacks on several Swiss websitesExternal link , including the official websites of the municipalities of Geneva and Vevey, as well as the Vaud Cantonal Bank. These attacks overload servers with requests, rendering portals inaccessible without causing data breaches. Similar attacks were reported the previous day, affecting local bank websites in Vaud and Zurich.

Russia has a well-oiled propaganda machine which was put in place during the Cold War by the Communist Party alongside the KGB (secret service) and military. Its goal was to reshape a narrative both inside and outside its borders. This hasn't changed. Much of Russia's propaganda aims to destabilise Western democracies, and Moscow often operates in alignment with allies such as China or Iran.

Russia needs this“to constantly weaken a potential adversary to install fear and doubt among its political and military actors and confuse analysts”, says Gatov. After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the military remained in charge of spreading propaganda, he explains.

Since the war in Ukraine , disinformation has focused on spreading false claims about Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelensky.

The primary aim is to undermine support for Ukraine in the international community and to discourage aid, by portraying the Ukrainian president as someone who supposedly misuses Western assistance for personal gain.

An example of coordinated disinformation happened after the terrorist attack at Crocus City Hall near Moscow in March 202 . The incident resulted in at least 60 deaths and 145 injuries and was one of the deadliest attacks in Russia in decades. The Islamist terrorist organisation ISIS-K claimed responsibility. But while international leaders condemned the attack, Russian TV channel NTV aired a fake video in which the Secretary of Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council allegedly“confirmed the involvement of the Kyiv regime” in the attack.

“Russian, Iranian, and Chinese State media all advanced false claims blaming the attack on the West”, says Switzerland-based Chine Labbe, managing editor and vice president at NewsGuard,External link a company that fights disinformation.

NewsGuard documented at least ten false claims worldwide feeding the idea that Zelensky and his family are misusing Western aid to buy luxury villas, resorts and jewellery.

Many of these claims went viral, spreading quickly across social media platforms and being shared by thousands or millions of users in a short time.

“Each claim contributed to making the next one more believable, slowly but surely pushing the narrative further and contributing to the erosion of international support for Ukraine.

Among the goods Zelensky and his family were accused of buying were Sting's Italian winery in Tuscany, the German villa of Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, and a luxury ski resort in the French Alps, Labbe says.

Russia's narrative also positions it in the ideological war against the West and what it considers Western values.

“I have also observed two consistent narratives: 'Traditional values are being saved in and by Russia in the war with Ukraine, while Western normal families seek refuge in Russia from LGBT activists and woke ideology'; and 'Europe is subordinate to the US with Washington pulling the strings',” explains Gatov.

A typical example of what can be seen in Switzerland is Iris Aschenbrenner's TikTok channel. Aschenbrenner is a former actor who worked for RT Germany in 2022 at the beginning of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. On her channel she shows a video of a random woman on the street on a motorbike, saying that it belongs to Olena Zelenska, Zelensky's wife. She also accuses her of buying a Bugatti.

“Measuring the actual impact of disinformation campaigns on public opinion and the political climate is highly challenging, but their broader effect lies in eroding trust,” Labbe says.

“This is often the ultimate goal of disinformation: to blur the lines between truth and falsehood, sow suspicion, and gradually undermine trust.”

Since the war in Ukraine, Russia's narrative has taken hold in right-wing conservative circles both in Europe and the US. In 2023 various German media outlets found that Germany's far-right party AfD was connected to RussiaExternal link and that it supported its annexation of Crimea in 2014. External lin

“If political forces, like in Austria and Germany, allow radical right-wing movements to enter the mainstream – movements that would not unite to confront Russia but are ideologically aligned with Russian views – this is already a victory for Russian diplomacy,” says Yablokov.

In Switzerland some politicians belonging to the right-wing Swiss People's Party, the largest political force in parliament, have expressed sympathy for Russian president Vladimir PutinExternal lin . Last year a“Russian-Swiss Friendship group” was founded with some members having close ties to the People's Party.

A survey conducted by Swiss media group Tamedia External link and newspaper 20 Minutes at the start of the war found that 40 % of Swiss People's Party supporters said they“condemned the war but [could] understand Putin's motives”. That compared with a 20% average for the other political parties.

One of the most efficient ways to prevent the spread of disinformation is to stop it going viral in the first place, while educating people about how to spot it is also effective, experts say.

Media platforms and governments have a critical role to play, Labbe adds. She stresses that much depends on algorithmic recommendations.

Yablokov emphasises that the best way to combat disinformation would be to make its production costly. Today, however, large language models, social networks and bots are virtually free.

Furthermore, he adds, the current trend among social media sites is to scale back moderation, which“further reduces the cost of production” of such disinformation.

On January 7, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced he would stop the fact-checking of claims on Facebook, Instagram and Threads, all of which boast millions of users. X previously scaled back on its fact-checking when Elon Musk bought the company.

“The best thing that can be done to protect us from fake news and propaganda is to focus on education and media literacy,” says Nicolas Zahn, the Geneva-based managing director of the Swiss Digital Initiative link

“Every person in a country needs to become their own sort of intelligence analyst – being critical in assessing the source of information, being literate enough to understand when something could potentially be fake, and looking for several sources to confirm,” Zahn says.

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