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As they say? The guest is king. However, the Ukrainian president becomes a beggar in Bern.
There will be no gifts from the Swiss parliament for Volodymyr Zelensky (45), who will give a speech at the Federal Palace via video call on Thursday. Indirect weapon assistance: not so fast! Generous financial aid: not at SVP, FDP and Mitte! Last week, to the outrage of the left, the National Council rejected a five billion euro aid program.
Selenski’s virtual visit creates uncertainty under the dome of the Federal Palace. The SVP faction has made it clear to stay away from his speech, especially as it was scheduled for the lunch break – ideal for the representatives of the People’s Party. But can there be deviations?
The Bernese People’s Councilor Andreas Aebi (64) would in any case have considered listening to Selenski. Aebi is a member of the delegation to the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly. He was torn, he told SonntagsBlick in the lobby last week: “But I probably won’t participate.”
“We stab the Bundesrat in the back”
Like most of his fellow party members, he is disturbed that a representative of the foreign government should be speaking in the venerable chamber of the National Council. Such meetings should take place at government level, says the farmer from Burgdorf. “Who is next? EU President Ursula von der Leyen? Or even US President Joe Biden?”
The chairman of the foreign policy committee of the National Council, Franz Grüter (59), will also not be present at Selenski’s speech. The National Council of Lucerne says that another lunch event has been planned for this day for some time.
He also has fundamental reservations: “If we start giving heads of state a platform, we will shoot the Bundesrat in the back.” Performances by foreign government officials have no tradition in the Bundeshaus, says Grüter.
Even former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill had to make do with the auditorium of the University of Zurich for his historic speech in September 1946, one year after the end of the Second World War. However, every SVP member is free to listen to Selenski, says Grüter. “There are no stable orders.”
The preparations are in full swing
What Zelensky will talk about is not known. A conference on the reconstruction of Ukraine will be held in London next week. It is quite possible that the president of Kiev will respond to this. The Ukrainian embassy in Bern, meanwhile, is silent: “It would be wrong to talk about it now. The situation in Ukraine is changing rapidly.
Meanwhile, the parliamentary services are working intensively on preparations for the big day. In addition to the permanently installed screens, two more monitors must be set up in the National Council Chamber. When it comes to security and control measures, people think in several scenarios, says Mark Stucki of the parliamentary services. “However, we cannot provide any further information on this.”
Since the spectator’s stand is closed at 12:00 p.m. on session days as usual, no protest meetings will take place there in any case.
In the virtual space it looks different. Anyone who has tried to access Parliament’s website in recent days has received an error message. When asked about the reasons, the parliamentary services gave only a standard answer: “For security reasons, we do not provide information about the details of the attack or the defensive measures taken.”
One thing is clear: it is a so-called Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack, which has been running since Wednesday – an intentional overload of the server. Internal systems and data have not been compromised and the website has not been hacked, a spokeswoman confirmed to Sonntagsblick. “The specialists have taken appropriate defensive measures.”
There are always attacks on servers
The fact that the attack happened just these days might have something to do with Selenski’s video appearance. Other parliaments that recently invited the Ukrainian president also fell victim to DDoS attacks. Russian gangs were always the prime suspects.
“A political background is very obvious,” Reto Vogt, editor-in-chief of the trade magazine Inside IT, explains to Sunday’s View. Such attacks are annoying for those affected, but in fact harmless, because it is simply a matter of overloading the server. “You can counter that with more server capacity – and with a little patience.”
The federal prosecutor’s office confirmed in the “Tages-Anzeiger” that they had opened criminal proceedings because of the online attacks. Investigations in this regard have started.
Source:Blick
I am Liam Livingstone and I work in a news website. My main job is to write articles for the 24 Instant News. My specialty is covering politics and current affairs, which I’m passionate about. I have worked in this field for more than 5 years now and it’s been an amazing journey. With each passing day, my knowledge increases as well as my experience of the world we live in today.
