Ready to Become Location of Ukraine Peace Summit, Switzerland Restricts Movement of Mossad Agents

BERN – The Swiss parliament supports a motion to tighten measures to expel spies. They targeted intelligence agents Russia which acts a lot in Switzerland.

It comes as Bern prepares to host a major summit aimed at paving the way for peace in Ukraine.

With the results of a vote of 32 votes in favor and nine votes against on Monday evening, upper house MPs supported the motion entitled “systematically expel Russian and other foreign spies” which was supported by President Viola Amherd in her speech in parliament .

“Foreign countries should feel that Switzerland is reacting to security violations and defending itself,” Amherd said, as reported by Reuters. That’s exactly two weeks before his government prepares to host dozens of countries for Ukraine peace talks.

Amherd said the government wanted to consistently expel intelligence officers whose activities endangered Switzerland’s security or its role as a host country, while stressing that the motion would not result in automatic decision-making.

Franziska Roth, a lawmaker from the center-left Social Democratic Party, and one of the supporters of the measure, said neutral Switzerland was a “magnet” for spies because of the concentration of international organizations in the country.

“This is especially true of Russian spies, according to domestic intelligence agencies,” he added.

Arguing that Switzerland needs to show “zero tolerance” for spying, Roth said the motion should strengthen mechanisms to control and expel spies.

Switzerland on June 15-16 will host a summit near the central city of Lucerne that it hopes will pave the way for a future peace process over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Russia has not been invited to date, and Switerland confirmed this on the grounds that Moscow has repeatedly said it is not interested in taking part.

(ahm)