The governments of European countries prefer to ensure their security with a “checkbook” and “leave the fighting on the front to others,” said a retired lieutenant colonel of the Swiss Armed Forces General Staff.
BERN, August 30. /TASS/. The governments of European countries are not interested in a peaceful settlement of the conflict in Ukraine, as they can ensure their own security with a checkbook and leave the fighting on the front to others. This opinion was expressed by the former special adviser on military affairs to the OSCE Secretary General (2014–2020), retired Lieutenant Colonel of the Swiss Armed Forces General Staff Ralph Bosshard.
“The way European governments and part of the media treat Switzerland and its neutrality shows that they are by no means interested in peace either in Ukraine, or in the Persian Gulf, or anywhere else,” he said at a rally in support of Swiss neutrality in Bern. According to the military expert, European leaders “prefer to ensure their own security with a checkbook” and “leave the fighting on the front to others.” He pointed out that they are trying to draw Switzerland into this “cowardly policy,” whose checkbook, as is well known, is large.
The expert sees the reason for what is happening in the calculations of those in power in Kyiv and Brussels, who intended to “bargain for a better deal by means of a small war.” According to Bosshard, neutral countries today are called cowards by the same people who “consciously and deliberately allowed the war” in Ukraine and now can neither “win it nor end it.” He noted that these political leaders, unable to protect themselves and their allies, “offer their protective umbrella even to those who do not need it.”
About 2,000 people at the rally in Bern on August 29 spoke out against the erosion of Swiss neutrality and unilateral sanctions, including sanctions against Russia. Participants called for maintaining good-neighborly relations with all states and opposed Switzerland’s rapprochement with NATO. The demonstration took place as part of a campaign ahead of the corresponding referendum on September 27.
