Russian media talked about the future division of Ukraine. Some of them referred, as it were, to Switzerland’s position on this issue in the headlines. This is a fake.
Fake
The original source of the news was an interview of the former NATO adviser, retired colonel of the Swiss General Staff, Jacques Beau, on the YouTube channel Daniel Davis / Deep Dive. http://surl.li/nlsbpg
“There are some neighboring countries, such as Poland, Hungary and Romania, who may want to get their part of the territory that used to belong to them. “Probably, thanks to the Europeans, we are now witnessing the end of Ukraine,” said the ex-soldier.
Apparently, the former positions and titles of Jacques Beau became the main reason for the reproduction of only this quote from an interview with a little-known channel by the leading Russian media. Previously, the Ukrainian media cited Jacques Beau’s scandalous statements.
“All promises to accept Ukraine into NATO and the EU are nothing more than empty words, as Kyiv has never met the requirements of either union,” Espresso website quoted him as saying in an interview with Dialogue Works. http://surl.li/cbaqdw
WHO IS THIS ANYWAY?
Jacques Beau once served in the Swiss army, worked in the UN and NATO structures, holding very high positions.
Between 1983 and 1990, Jacques Baud was a member of the Swiss Strategic Intelligence Service, specializing in tracking the actions of Warsaw Pact forces.
In 1995, because of his knowledge of Africa and anti-personnel mines, he was appointed as the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Subsequently, he worked as an expert of the Mine Action Service of the United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations in New York.
In the structures of NATO, he managed the division of combating the proliferation of small arms and mines of the Division of Political Affairs and Security Policy.
WHAT IS WRONG WITH HIM?
As the French Wikipedia writes, the first “bell” of strangeness in the worldview of the Swiss officer was his statement in 2009 that Osama bin Laden was not involved in the September 11 terrorist attacks. http://surl.li/coycjw
Later, he became a regular critic of the West, an apologist for the Syrian dictator Assad and a repeater of Putin’s position and actions. Thanks to this, Jacques Baud became a regular guest of the right-wing radical French channel TV Libertés and Russian RT.
After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Jacques Beau publishes the book “Putin, master of the game?”, where he claimed that the purpose of the “special operation” was the demilitarization of Ukraine, and the massacre in Buch was a provocation by the SBU.
In recent years, he has published several more books about the Russian-Ukrainian war, each of which is based on anti-Western pro-Russian narratives.
CONCLUSIONS
Quotes and forecasts of the pseudo-expert would not have any weight even in the Russian media, if it were not for his former high positions in the UN and NATO. At the same time, Jacque Beau does not embrace any, so his opinion is private.
At the same time, in the European information space, Jacques Beau is accused of conspiracy, and even more – of allegedly receiving royalties from Putin.
And, obviously, Switzerland has nothing to do with Jacques Beau’s propagandistic theses.
Russian propaganda uses manipulative techniques of scaling and substitution of concepts in the submission of Jacques Beau’s statements – almost all Russian resources present this information with the emphasis “in Switzerland it was allowed”. Thus, the reader gets the false impression that this is the official position or statement of the country. Instead, this is the subjective opinion of one person, which is also engaged in Russian propaganda.
