Should Swiss voters worry about foreign influence during elections?

Less than a week before the Swiss go to the polls, a classified intelligence report has emerged that reveals a possible Russian influence campaign to divide public opinion. How susceptible are the Swiss to this type of propaganda? The focus of the intelligence report, seen by the NZZ am Sonntag, is a blurry video shared on X (formerly Twitter) in September that’s meant to show migrants in a bad light. In it, a Black man appears to be urinating on a street in the town of Baden, northern Switzerland. The video was viewed hundreds of thousands of times, says the newspaper, although it’s unclear when it was actually shot. The Federal Intelligence Service (FIS) says in its classified report that “most of the accounts that drove the distribution of the video are probably not authentic” and are likely of Russian origin. “In the information space, Russia is actively exploiting the issue of migration to influence Western states,” the FIS is quoted as saying. By casting migrants as threats...