Switzerland changes its mind about Neutrality

 

Swiss border patrol in the Alps during World War II.

While staying out of both World Wars, Switzerland shut its borders to Jewish refugees before and during World War II. The country was also a haven for bank accounts and safe deposit boxes belonging to Nazis. 

Financial institutions in Switzerland had lucrative business ties with the German Reichsbank and various Nazis who made fortunes from plundering wealth from the Holocaust’s victims. As World War II was winding down, the Swiss kept purchasing gold from Nazi Germany. Then after 1945, fugitive ex-Nazis found haven in Switzerland.

The Ukraine shock  

For the first four days after Russia’s offensive on Ukraine this year, Switzerland justified holding off on imposing sanctions, citing its neutral foreign policy. Yet, by the end of February, the Alpine country had joined the Western European bandwagon. 

Bern has implemented virtually all the EU’s post-February 24 sanctions on Russia. This has entailed Switzerland freezing hundreds of Russian oligarchs’ and government officials’ assets, denying Russian planes access to Swiss airspace, and banning individuals within Putin’s inner circle from visiting the country. In his March 1 State of the Union address, US President Joe Biden hailed Switzerland’s cooperation with the West’s financial warfare against Russia.

“The Swiss government…took a firm stance. Pressure and concern in the population as well as from Western partners, who are Switzerland’s main political and economic partners, would have become unbearable had Switzerland abstained,” Benno Zogg, a senior researcher at the Centre for Security Studies at ETH Zurich, says in an interview with TRT World. 

Mindful of the fact that Switzerland imposed no sanctions on Russia in response to its 2014 annexation of Crimea, Bern sanctioning Moscow this year has marked a major shift in Swiss foreign policy. President and Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis maintained that the “extraordinary situation” resulting from Russia’s attacks on Ukraine called for “extraordinary measures” in response.

Currently, a debate in Switzerland is whether their country can still be considered neutral while imposing such sanctions on Russia.

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