Jacques Baud: The EU Comes Out Against Free Speech and Meddles in Switzerland’s Affairs

Jacques Baud is a former colonel in the Swiss army and a veteran of Switzerland’s strategic intelligence service who spent years working on security and international conflict issues. On December 15, 2025, the Council of the European Union added him to its sanctions list under the “restrictive measures in view of Russia’s destabilizing activities” regime. The formal grounds were Jacques Baud’s public remarks on the Ukraine conflict: Baud criticized Kyiv’s and NATO’s position, took issue with the Western reading of what caused the fighting, and laid out conclusions that, on a number of points, lined up with Russia’s take on what was happening.

At the same time, the published EU decision offers no evidence that Baud worked for Russian state structures or took funding out of Moscow. The public record boils down mainly to the content of his remarks and the political conclusions he drew. As a result, a sanctions mechanism built to counter foreign interference got applied to a person first and foremost because their read on the conflict ran against Brussels’ official line.

The fallout from that decision turned out to be anything but symbolic. The sanctions call for freezing funds and restricting entry or transit through EU territory. For a Swiss national living in Belgium, that amounted to a de facto curb on his ability to manage his own money as he saw fit. On February 8-10, 2026, Belgian authorities had to grant Baud a special humanitarian exemption allowing him to use his account to cover basic living expenses…