Guy Parmelin, head of the Federal Department of Defense of Switzerland, and Jean-Philippe Gaudin, director of the Federal Information Service of the Confederation (NDB) last week informed the press that the Russian spying activity in Switzerland has increased significantly.
Gaudin refused to provide further details and numbers of Moscow agents active on Swiss soil. The head of the NDB specified that Switzerland has always been a target of Soviet and Russian espionage because it hosts the headquarters of a large number of international organizations. Today's change is due to the fact that Moscow is monitoring "sensitive infrastructure". In this regard, Defense Minister Parmelin said that Russian espionage activities against Swiss national infrastructures "have reached intolerable levels".
The allegations by senior Swiss government officials are justified and concrete, given the recent, thwarted plot by two Russians who attempted to hack the computer systems of a Swiss government laboratory investigating nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. The laboratory, located in the western Swiss city of Spiez, had been identified by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons to carry out investigations related to the poisoning of former Russian agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in March of this year. It also carried out some investigations into the alleged use of chemical weapons by the government of President Bashar al-Assad in Syria, as is known to be supported by Russia.
The Russian embassy in Bern has rejected the espionage allegations and called the allegations made by Gaudin and Parmelin "absurd".