Switzerland Today

Greetings from Bern!

“There are an awful lot of highly intelligent, thoughtful, accomplished people who work for the WEF,” says journalist Peter Goodman. “But let’s not kid ourselves. It’s ultimately under the guise of a non-profit, a highly successful business run by Klaus and Hilda Schwab. We don’t know where the money goes.”

As the WEF circus rolls into the Swiss mountain resort of Davos, Goodman tells us in an interview about his book, Davos Man, the Ukraine war and why, despite all its flaws, Davos is still worth the trip.

We also catch up with Ukrainians Viktoriia and her daughter Polina, who are settling into life in Bern.

Keystone / Alessandro Guerra

In the news:  Boris Bondarev, a Russian diplomat at the UN in Geneva, has resigned because of his disagreement with Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. He hopes the Swiss government will help him.

• He said he had raised his concerns about the invasion with senior embassy staff several times. “I was told to keep my mouth shut in order to avoid ramifications,” he said. Asked whether Bondarev could expect asylum, Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis replied: “Every person has the right to apply for asylum. The application will then be examined individually.”
• An online petition has been launched calling on the University of Lausanne to revoke the honorary doctorateExternal link awarded in 1937 to Italian fascist leader Benito Mussolini. It also asks that Professor Jean Wintsch, who opposed the award at the time, be honoured.
• US rock star Bruce Springsteen is returning to Switzerland after a break of more than six years. The 72-year-old leader of the E Street Band will give a concert in Zurich on June 13, 2023, as part of a series of concerts starting in North America and Europe. Tickets for the Swiss concert go on sale on Monday and are reported to cost CHF125-220 ($130-230).

Keystone / Alessandro Della Valle

The global elite are gathering in the Alps this week for the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting. Journalist Peter Goodman, author of Davos Man, argues that these globe-trotting billionaires are a “separate species” who have become so powerful that they’re writing the rules for the rest of us.

In a wide-ranging interview, my colleague Jessica Davis Plüss asks Goodman, who has been to the WEF meeting ten times, whether Switzerland played a role in the creation of Davos Man.

“The secrecy element, as an inherent part of doing business, is certainly significant,” he says. “The fact that Switzerland has for now generations been a place where wealthy people can show up, no questions asked, and conduct their business and find a highly competent bureaucracy that protects their secrets to move money around – I don’t think that’s an accident. It’s no coincidence that this non-profit that is actually a highly successful business is propped up in a country that presents secrecy as a comparative advantage.”

/ Sladusha

Viktoriia Bilychenko, 34, and her ten-year-old daughter, Polina, fled from the southern Ukrainian city of Mykolayiv to Switzerland and now live in Bern, 2,500 kilometres away. They are staying with Gaby Ochsenbein, who is writing a blog about their – and her – experiences.

In the second blogpost, Gaby explains that Viktoriia and Polina (pictured) are learning German and have worked out where to go shopping and which bus to take to the station. They spend much of their remaining hours in contact with relatives back home.

But although they are safe, the psychological scars are still there. One morning, when a helicopter was circling noisily over Bern to remove fallen trees, Polina was scared. Memories of the war, which she suddenly thought had reached Bern, rose to the surface.

“I constantly wonder how it feels when parts of your own country are reduced to rubble, your hometown is being bombed and millions of your compatriots are being driven out,” Gaby writes. “Viktoriia and Polina don’t know when they will see their relatives again and when this nightmare will be over. […] What they really want is to go home as soon as possible, to familiar surroundings, to lives that changed dramatically on February 24.”