Russian author accuses Switzerland of facilitating Ukraine war

Shishkin has lived in Switzerland since 1994. Georgios Kefalas

Mikhail Shishkin, a Russian author who lives in Switzerland, has accused the Alpine nation of emboldening the Russian dictatorship by supporting Russian sporting events.

In an interview published in the Tamedia Group on Tuesday, Shishkin held Switzerland to be indirectly responsible for the war in Ukraine. During the 2014 Olympic Games in the Russian resort of Sochi, the Swiss “built their little house External linkthere and we had the annexation of Crimea as a result”, said the award-winning author, who has lived in Switzerland since 1994.

During the 2018 football World Cup, Shishkin called on Switzerland to show solidarity with the Ukrainian people. “But the Swiss, like everyone else, preferred to play football,” he said.

According to him, Russian President Vladimir Putin got the message that the West tacitly supported the war, “so the way was open for the invasion of Ukraine on February 24”.

‘Dictatorship of bandits’

According to Shishkin, Switzerland had already made mistakes in the 1990s. “Together with other Western states it should have helped the young Russian democracy of the 1990s to recover,” he argues, but instead it helped the “new criminal dictatorship”.

The author also claims to have seen, as an interpreter working in Switzerland, how the country accepted “dirty money with great pleasure”. Without the support of Bern, but also of London and Washington, no “dictatorship of bandits” would have come into being.