In today’s Vatnik Soup, we’ll introduce the “Safeguard Swiss neutrality” ballot initiative, which goes to a nationwide vote in Switzerland on 27 September. Superficially, its promise can sound appealing: peace, sovereignty, and permanent armed neutrality. But most of that is a distraction:
Switzerland is already neutral, and it is not about to be dragged into NATO: membership would already require a referendum and a majority of both voters and cantons. Switzerland, in fact, receives enormous security benefits by being surrounded by NATO and the EU — but nobody is forcing it to join.
The real goal of the initiative is to restrict Switzerland’s ability to impose sanctions on belligerent states. After Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022, Switzerland followed EU sanctions. A few months later, Christoph Blocher launched the initiative.
Blocher is one of the most influential figures in modern Swiss politics. The billionaire industrialist led the successful campaign against joining the European Economic Area in 1992 and played a key role in transforming the Swiss People’s Party (SVP) from a small party to Switzerland’s largest.
For decades, he also led the Campaign for an Independent and Neutral Switzerland, which was merged with other groups in 2022 to create Pro Schweiz. Blocher had advocated a stricter neutrality long before 2022, but Russia’s invasion and the following sanctions gave that project its immediate purpose.
Blocher’s daughter, Magdalena Martullo-Blocher, is an SVP politician, a member of the initiative’s main campaign committee, and the CEO and a major shareholder of EMS-Chemie, the company she took over from her father.
EMS-Chemie has operations in Russia and strong commercial interests in China. After Russia invaded Ukraine, the company instructed employees to refer to the invasion as the “Ukraine conflict” rather than “war,” officially to protect them after Russia made it illegal to call its war a war.
The wider political-media environment is equally telling. Roger Köppel, owner and editor-in-chief of Weltwoche, a long-time Blocher ally, has conducted friendly interviews with some of the Kremlin’s most infamous propagandists, including Vladimir Solovyov and RT editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan.
In July, Köppel interviewed Simonyan in Moscow for Weltwoche under the headline “Europeans, stop this war!” and gave her ample space to portray Europe as the aggressor and Russia as the poor little victim with no bad intentions towards Europeans whatsoever. vatniksoup.com
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Somehow Ukrainians don’t count: the daily terror bombing of a sovereign European nation; the atrocities of Russian occupation; the kidnapping and Russification of European children. Not to mention Russia’s hybrid war against the rest of Europe or Simonyan’s own belligerent statements against us.
Köppel did not ask about any of this. And it’s not just Swiss vatniks like him or Jacques Baud that support the initiative. Clare Daly is directly involved, and Jackson Hinkle, posting Russian state media footage, is already rejoicing about “the lifting of sanctions, including those against Russia.”
Swiss sanctions are far from symbolic: as a financial and commodity-trading centre, Switzerland punches far above its weight. Before 2022, roughly 75% of Russian coal trading and 60% of Russian oil trading was handled through Switzerland. Switzerland also froze around CHF 8.5 billion Russian assets.
Swiss precision industry matters too. Russia’s arms industry depends heavily on advanced machine tools, spare parts and industrial equipment. Swiss-made machinery has even been found inside Russian weapons factories. srf.ch
www.srf.ch
If the initiative were accepted, the only sanctions Switzerland could still impose directly on a belligerent state would be those approved by the UN Security Council… where Russia has a veto.
And sanctions are not war: Switzerland has in fact gone to great lengths to remain militarily neutral during Russia’s ongoing invasion of a peaceful nation, including blocking Germany, Denmark and Spain from transferring Swiss-origin weapons and ammunition they already possessed to Ukraine.
The logic of the initiative is fascinating: Russia is violating international law every day, but somehow would respect Swiss neutrality if Switzerland is nice enough to them. Switzerland’s partners and potential allies, on the other hand, are expected not to notice. swissinfo.ch
www.swissinfo.ch
Some Swiss restrictions already go beyond what international law actually requires of a neutral state. Sanctions are precisely one of the main alternatives to military involvement: a way to raise the cost of aggression without sending a single Swiss soldier anywhere. swissinfo.ch
www.swissinfo.ch
The initiative’s supporters campaign under the peacenik slogan “No war!”. But war cannot simply be abolished by decree. Magdalena Martullo-Blocher could instruct her employees not to call Russia’s brutal war a war; Switzerland alone cannot force Russia to stop actually waging it.
The “No war!” slogan is particularly dishonest: the initiative does not prohibit Switzerland from sanctioning peaceful states, only belligerent ones. Absurdly, Switzerland could therefore impose sanctions on a state while it is at peace, yet would have to lift them if that state went to war. It is difficult to imagine a more literal way of rewarding aggression: under a proposal advertised as “No war!”, becoming a belligerent state would actually protect you from Swiss sanctions. Refusing to impose costs on a state that starts a war of aggression — or worse, rewarding it for it — does not make war disappear; in fact, it can help that war continue and increase the risk of future wars too. Even for Switzerland. Read our full report: Switzerland’s Neutrality Initiative: Neutrality, Sovereignty and the September 2026 Vote vatniksoup.com
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Russia spends $5 billion a year on propaganda narratives and information operations to manufacture support for its invasions through vatniks and useful idiots. Fact-based research to counter it takes time and effort — please support our work: vatniksoup.com
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Correction: the NATO map in 2/23 should of course include Sweden, who joined in March 2024. Apologies, Sweden (at least we didn't confuse you with Switzerland... 😬).