Russian Foreign Ministry summons Swiss ambassador

Switzerland’s Ambassador to Moscow Yves Rossier was summoned to the Russian foreign ministry on Tuesday to give explanations following ungrounded allegations about increased activities of Russian intelligence services in that country.

"Swiss Ambassador to Moscow Yves Rossier was summoned to the Russian foreign ministry on September 18," the ministry said in a press statement. "We demanded he give explanations about ungrounded accusations coming from Switzerland that our country is expanding the activities of special services in Switzerland and that alleged Russian agents are engaging in illegal activities aimed against Switzerland’s vital infrastructure," the ministry said.

"It was said to the ambassador that such confrontational rhetoric may do serious harm to the constructively developing Russian-Swiss relations," the ministry stressed.

Rossier promised to inform his country’s authorities about this warning.

Swiss Tages-Anzeiger daily wrote on September 14 that two Russian nationals had been arrested and then released in the Netherlands in the spring. These men allegedly planned to go to Switzerland to spy on a chemical laboratory in the town of Spiez. On the following day, Tages-Anzeiger and another Swiss daily, Tribune de Geneve, alleged that the Swiss Attorney General’s Office suspected these two Russian nationals of spying on the European office of the World Anti-Doping Agency in Lausanne. On Sunday, two more Swiss media outlets, SonntagsZeitung and Le Matin Dimanche, alleged that each fourth of the Russians accredited in Switzerland was a spy.