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. It’s best known for promising “no war” while actually encouraging wars by ending sanctions on belligerent states.

Switzerland is already neutral, and it is not about to be dragged into NATO: joining would already require a vote and a majority of both voters and cantons. Switzerland in fact receives enormous security benefits by being surrounded by NATO—but nobody is forcing it to join.

The real aim of the initiative is to restrict Switzerland’s ability to impose sanctions on belligerent states, such as Russia. After the full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022, Switzerland followed EU sanctions, and Christoph Blocher launched the initiative.

Blocher is one of the most influential figures in Swiss politics. The billionaire 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.

Magdalena Martullo-Blocher, his daughter, is an SVP politician as well, a member of the initiative’s 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, she instructed employees to refer to the invasion as the “Ukraine conflict” rather than “war,” after Russia made it illegal to call its war a war.

The wider political-media environment is also telling. Roger Köppel, owner of Weltwoche and long-time Blocher ally, 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 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.

Roger Köppel

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 even Russia’s war against the rest of Europe or Simonyan’s own belligerent statements?

Köppel did not ask. And it’s not just Swiss vatniks like him or Jacques Baud that support the initiative. Clare Daly is 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 trading centre, Switzerland punches far above its weight. Before 2022, 75% of Russian coal trading and 60% of Russian oil trading was handled through Switzerland, which also froze CHF 8.5 billion in 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.

Trotz Sanktionen: Schweizer Maschinen in Russlands Waffenfabriken

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.

Yes. Switzerland is a manufacturing giant with very loose export controls. Some examples of Swiss brands represented at the Russian missiles industry:

Machine tools: GF Machining Solutions, Bystronic, Fritz Studer, Galika, Traub, Mikron, Schaublin, Fela, Erowa

Robots: ABB https://t.co/wrR0aXbqGn pic.twitter.com/m5VQc8Ema8

— Kamil Galeev (@kamilkazani) December 3, 2023

The logic of the initiative is strange: Russia is violating international law every day BUT would respect Swiss neutrality if Switzerland appeases it enough. Switzerland’s partners and potential allies, on the other hand, are expected not to notice.

European nations snub Swiss-made weapons over Ukraine restrictions

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.

Sanctions are one of the main alternatives to military involvement: a way to raise the cost of aggression without sending a single Swiss soldier anywhere.

Swiss restrictions already go far beyond what international law requires of a neutral state.

Swiss demining firm criticises government’s export policy

The initiative’s supporters campaign under the 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 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 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 an authoritarian state from Swiss sanctions. Refusing to impose costs on a state that starts a war of aggression — or worse, rewarding 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.

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Read our full report: “Switzerland’s Neutrality Initiative: Neutrality, Sovereignty and the September 2026 Vote”

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