Swiss Democracy In The Crosshairs Of Russian Propaganda

(MENAFN- Swissinfo) Swiss authorities say there were covert operations ahead of Sunday's neutrality initiative vote, while Russian state media and actors also intervened openly in the campaign. International experts explain what Moscow hopes to achieve by such tactics. Select your language

Generated with artificial intelligence. Listening: Swiss democracy in the crosshairs of Russian propaganda This content was published on September 27, 2026 - 15:02 9 minutes

As a reporter I cover developments in democracy where the Swiss perspective becomes relevant. I am Swiss and have long been fascinated by the way public discussions shape society.

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Deutsch de Die Schweizer Demokratie im Fokus der russischen Propaganda Original Read more: Die Schweizer Demokratie im Fokus der russischen Propa Français fr La démocratie suisse dans le viseur de la propagande russe Read more: La démocratie suisse dans le viseur de la propagande

Russia had a direct interest in the outcome of the“neutrality initiative” vote. If it had been accepted, Switzerland would no longer have been allowed to follow European Union (EU) sanctions – rendering null and void the measures Bern has taken against Moscow since spring 2022.

Accordingly, Russian actors interfered not only openly in the referendum campaign, but also covertly, Swiss authorities confirm.“Coordinated, covert disinformation operations” were observed, the State Secretariat for Security Policy (SEPOS) wrote in response to a request by Swissinfo. However, SEPOS stressed that it does not believe“foreign actors” had a decisive impact.

Where do RT's articles come from?

When it comes to the open interference in the campaign, Russian state platform RT DE stood out with the many articles it published about the neutrality initiative.

“The propaganda effort is not aimed at a single brilliant, surgically placed article – it's about that one article and a thousand others,” says British historian Ian Garner.

Garner suspects that RT's Swiss stories are produced“somewhere in Russia at the Kremlin's direction”. Unlike before the start of the Russian war on Ukraine in 2022, young journalists in Western Europe are no longer keen to work for RT, he adds. For Garner, this“lack of cultural knowledge” flows into the articles and weakens Moscow's propaganda efforts. For example, during the vote campaign, RT published an article in Swiss dialect which was full of linguistic errors, and which seemed artificial. It has long been noticeable that the platform uses various words and spellings not found in Swiss German.

How RT previously sowed confusion

Nevertheless, earlier this year RT managed to land a media coup in Switzerland. It began with an opinion piece on the platform in favour of the“SBC licence fee initiative”, which proposed to reduce the annual fee Swiss residents must pay for the Swiss public broadcaster. The story was too good to ignore and many media outlets reported on it. But just hours after the first articles had appeared in Swiss media, RT published another opinion piece – under the same byline – taking the opposite position, in a manoeuvre which successfully sowed confusion.

For Ruslan Trad, an expert at the Digital Forensic Research Lab at the US think-tank Atlantic Council, the incident was“a textbook influence-operation tell – not a coincidence”. RT's aim was to“insert itself into the center of a live, emotionally charged Swiss debate, normalising its voice as a 'participant' in domestic political discourse and testing which framing travels further in Swiss media ecosystems”. For a short time, this enabled it to shape the narrative, according to Trad.

>> In early 2026, the Swiss defence minister already warned of Russian attacks on the country's“information space”:

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