Europe's HATE For Russia Is Destroying The Continent | Guy Mettan

## Religious Roots vs. Geopolitical Rivalry The exchange brings into sharp relief a thesis that often gets muffled in contemporary coverage: antipathy toward Russia is not a product of a single moment or a single policy disagreement. Rather, it is a palimpsest of religious schism, imperial rivalry and recurring geopolitical anxieties. The conversation traces a line from the East–West ecclesiastical rupture of the 11th century to present-day Western anxieties about a resurgent Moscow — and insists that those long‑standing cultural and religious stereotypes continue to shape modern political narratives. At the heart of this argument is the idea that the Great Schism implanted durable clichés into Western consciousness: Orthodox Christianity became associated with backwardness, despotism and otherness, while Catholic and Protestant identities came to represent the normative European center. Over centuries these religious tropes migrated into secular political discourse, supplying readily available metaphors — barbaric, despotic, expansionist — with which to depict Russian state power. The conversation stresses that even when religion receded as the dominant public ideology, its residue remained active: the cultural geography of Europe was redrawn along an East–West axis that still surfaces in perceptions of Ukraine and the Baltics. But the discussion is careful not to reduce Russophobia solely to ecclesiastical lineage. It situates religion as one deep root among many, and notes how later geopolitical competition — particularly the rivalry between emergent European powers in the 18th and 19th centuries — grafted new political meanings onto that religious scaffold. The result is a multi-layered hostility that can be invoked either as ancient cultural prejudice or as contemporary strategic rationality, depending on the moment and the audience. ## Russia’s Historical Role in Swiss Sovereignty One of the more striking claims in the conversation is the reminder that Russian involvement was pivotal to the emergence of modern Swiss sovereignty. Contrary to a popular narrative that celebrates Swiss neutrality as an inwardly generated achievement, the discussion highlights how external forces, and especially Russian diplomacy and military pressure, were instrumental in securing Switzerland’s territorial integrity and neutral status at the Congress of Vienna. The argument recounts how Russian troops participated alongside other coalitions in pushing back Napoleonic occupation, and how tsarist diplomacy — notably through figures such as Count Capodistria — helped shape the international recognition of Swiss independence. Seen in this light, Swiss neutrality is not merely the product of domestic wisdom or Swiss exceptionalism; it is an arrangement that depended on 19th‑century great‑power settlement. The conversation therefore challenges contemporary Swiss amnesia about these external roots and asks why modern debates about neutrality rarely recall the instrumental role Moscow once played. By foregrounding this history, the discussion reframes neutrality not as a frozen national virtue but as a diplomatic compromise that emerged from the balance of power politics of its time. It opens a conceptual space to ask whether neutrality can or should be decoupled from great‑power dynamics in the contemporary European order — and whether Ukraine’s failed neutrality project might be understood in part through the lens of that historical precedent. ## The "Testament of Peter the Great" & Political Forgeries 00:28: 11 Why is Russia Targeted Specifically? The conversation delves into a revealing case study: the so‑called "Testament of Peter the Great," a forgery that circulated in the 18th and 19th centuries claiming that Russian rulers planned to conquer Western Europe. The fraudulent text was used, at crucial moments, to justify preventive hostility toward Russia — most dramatically, as propaganda to validate Napoleon’s 1812 campaign and later as fodder in British and French press demonization campaigns. This episode is cited as emblematic of how conspiratorial narratives and fabricated documents can become durable elements of international perception. The testimony of forgery sustained the portrayal of Russia as a perennial menace, even after historians exposed the document as inauthentic. The conversation uses this example to argue that anti‑Russian sentiment has, at times, been manufactured and institutionalized for strategic ends: to rally domestic support for wars, to legitimize alliances, or to delegitimize potential Russian influence in Europe. The broader point concerns the persistence of narrative artifacts: once a trope — whether forged testament or caricature — takes hold in political culture, it acquires a life of its own. Even after the underlying facts are discredited, the metaphorical power of the image remains. In this way, the "Testament" episode becomes a cautionary tale about how misinformation can harden into geopolitical common sense and continue to shape policy long after its evidentiary basis has vanished. ## Colonialism & the Collapse of Western Soft Power A recurring theme is the declining moral and persuasive authority of Western institutions and the way that decline intersects with perceptions of Russia. The discussion connects modern Russophobia to the exhaustion of Western soft power: as Western states have grown less able to project coherent cultural authority abroad — whether because of post‑colonial backlash, military overreach, or competing narratives from non‑Western actors — the reflex has too often been to externalize insecurity in the form of demonizing rivals. The exchange suggests that the decline of an uncontested Western normative order creates political space for alternative narratives, and that the West’s reaction has frequently been defensive and hysterical rather than introspective. In this reading, the intensification of anti‑Russian sentiment since 2014 and especially since 2022 is not simply a function of Moscow’s policies; it also reflects a crisis of confidence in Western cultural leadership. When the West can no longer rely on unquestioned moral authority, it tends to amplify threats and sharpen caricatures of others to shore up domestic consensus. This critique does not excuse Kremlin policies or deny the real security dilemmas in Eastern Europe; rather, it reframes contemporary hostility as partly symptomatic of a larger geopolitical disorientation. The erosion of Western soft power, the conversation argues, changes how rivalries are narrated and how policy choices are justified to domestic publics. ## EU Sanctions as a Sign of Lost Control Sanctions, the conversation contends, are not merely instruments of policy but also diagnostic signals about the state of Western influence. The scaling up of punitive measures against Russia is interpreted here as evidence of diminishing levers of control: when diplomatic engagement and softer instruments fail to produce desired outcomes, punitive ones become the visible, but often blunt, policy of choice. This part of the exchange warns that sanctions are frequently performative — designed as much to signal resolve domestically and to punish rhetorically as to achieve strategic re‑ordering. The discussion suggests that reliance on sanctions indicates a loss of subtlety in Western policy: when actors feel they have fewer tools to shape outcomes abroad, they default to coercive measures that can have unpredictable consequences and may further entrench adversarial relationships. The critique is double‑edged. Sanctions can indeed impose real costs; that does not absolve governments of the responsibility to weigh their long‑term effects on regional stability and the domestic politics of target populations. The conversation urges a sober assessment of whether sanctions are being used because they are effective, or because they are the most visible option in a policy tool

Europe's HATE For Russia Is Destroying The Continent Today I’m joined by Guy Mettan, a Swiss Journalist and Politician who is currently serving as a member of parliament in Geneva, one of Switzerland’s 26 cantons. Monsieur Mettan is also the author of the book Creating Russophobia: From the Great Religious Schism to Anti-Putin Hysteria, which he published already back in 2017. Links: Guy's Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/guy. mettan Guy's Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/guymettan/ Pluralia: https://pluralia.com/ RS SEGEL- UND PLANENTECHNIK: http://rs1.info Neutrality Studies substack: https://pascallottaz. substack.com (Opt in for Academic Section: https://pascallottaz.substack.com/s/academic) Goods Store: https://neutralitystudies-shop.fourthwall.com Timestamps: 00:00:00 Introduction & Origins of "Creating Russophobia" 00:05:58 Religious Roots vs. Geopolitical Rivalry 00:09:34 Russia’s Historical Role in Swiss Sovereignty 00:14:02 The "Testament of Peter the Great" & Political Forgeries 00:28: 11 Why is Russia Targeted Specifically? 00:33:45 Colonialism & the Collapse of Western Soft Power 00:38:55 EU Sanctions as a Sign of Lost Control 00:43:10 The Erosion of Swiss Neutrality Since 2022 00:56:48 Where to Follow Guy Mettan #Pascal Welcome back, everybody. Pascal here from Neutrality Studies, and today I'm joined by Guy Mettan, a Swiss journalist and politician who is currently serving as a member of parliament in Geneva, one of Switzerland's 26 cantons. Monsieur Mettan is also the author of the book *Creating Russophobia: From the Great Religious Schism to Anti-Putin Hysteria*, which he published back in 2017. Monsieur Mettan, welcome. #Guy Mettan Thank you very much for inviting me to this exchange. I follow your interviews regularly, and I really appreciate what you’re trying to do. #Pascal Thank you very much. I mean, we're trying to bring a little bit of light into the darkness that is the current environment. I was very impressed when I found your book, published in 2017, about Russophobia. You know, that moment when people come up with every possible story about Russia and Putin and so on—it certainly intensified in 2022 after the full-scale war began. But you saw it very early, and you saw it in Switzerland. Can you tell me more about Russophobia and the Swiss or European obsession with this idea of Russia as an enemy? -- 1 of 14 -- #Guy Mettan Yeah, so it came from a personal experience. In my life, when I got married—33 years ago—we decided, my wife and I, to adopt a young Russian girl. As you know, at that time the Soviet Union had collapsed, and it was a terrible economic situation, especially in the orphanages. We decided to adopt one of those children who had been abandoned, let’s say, in a Russian orphanage without money, support, or even food. And that’s why I became a little more sensitive to Russia. I got to know the country a bit better, and for the past 30 years I’ve been following what happens there. In 2014, I also organized many exhibitions, cultural exchanges, and scientific exchanges between Russia and Switzerland—starting in the 1990s and continuing into the beginning of this century. And in 2014, I was very surprised, as a journalist—I've been one for 45 years now—by the way my colleagues in the media were talking about Russia. It was a completely distorted way of doing normal journalism, you know, of being objective or impartial. When they covered Russian topics, they completely failed to be honest and fair in their reporting. And that’s why, after the Maidan events—the Maidan coup d’état, let’s say it like that—I said, it’s no longer possible to let that situation continue in the media. That’s why, in 2014, I started the book. It was first published in French in 2015, and it had some success at that time. Then I found a publisher in the United States, Clarity Press, which was interested in publishing it in English, and also in Italy. The last edition, I think, was in South Korea two years ago, and we’re now preparing a Bulgarian edition. Because this topic was new, as you mentioned, at the time, and many readers like you asked the same question: why hate Russia so much? In the West, I mean. And I think if we are normal people, we should try to understand why that is the case. That was the start—the beginning of my reflection on Russophobia and its history in the West, because I discovered that this hatred is very old, with deep roots in history. It can be traced back about a thousand years, to the religious differences between the Orthodox and the Catholics, when the schism appeared in the 11th century AD between Rome and Byzantium—Constantinople— which at that time was the real center of Christendom until its collapse under the Ottomans in the 15th century. #Pascal Do you think that this schism—the religious component—still plays a role today in how Russophobia works? Or is it more about the geopolitical situation? I mean, Glenn Diesen also wrote an important book on Russophobia, and he traces it back to the Anglo-Saxon world and the rivalry between the UK and Russia in the 18th and 19th centuries. Where do you see its main focus? #Guy Mettan -- 2 of 14 -- Yes, we shared the task with Glenn because he’s more focused on the contemporary period, the present times, and, as you say, on the Anglo-Saxon world. We’ve been in contact for many years. So, yes, I think religion is still playing a role. It plays a role from a historical point of view because it has rooted, let’s say, clichés or stereotypes—the bad Russian, the bad Orthodox, you know, and the good Catholic—going back a thousand years now. And you have the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith in Rome, instituted in the 13th century, to fight against the “bad” Orthodox. You know, with the same clichés as now—the Orthodox are the barbarians, they’re despotic, they want to conquer us—which is completely the opposite. It’s upside down. But those were the themes of the religious propaganda spread by the Catholic Church for such a long time. And that’s why it’s so deeply rooted in our spirit now, in our minds. And secondly, it’s still effective today. If you look at the fight now in Ukraine, that’s the frontier—the border between, let’s say, the Catholic or the Western world—because Protestantism is kind of a follow-up to Catholicism, you know. But if you look, the dividing line—the gap between the Western part of Europe and the Eastern part, between the Catholic-Protestant part of Europe and the Orthodox—it runs from Finland through the Baltic countries, and it cuts Ukraine in two. The western part, around Lviv, has the Uniates, who are affiliated with the Roman Church, and the eastern part is Orthodox, affiliated until recently with Moscow, with Orthodoxy. And this line is still dividing Europe today. The main, let’s say, nationalist or jingoist groups in Ukraine come from Lviv, from the western Uniate part of Ukraine. And that’s why this divide is still so strong, even if it’s not always conscious, even if we’re not aware of it—but it’ s still shaping the current war in Ukraine. #Pascal How do you think it affects, you know, even a country like Switzerland? I mean, in theory, you’d think Switzerland would remember that the last time we were occupied—because we’re very proud of 200 years of constant peace and neutrality—the last time we were occupied, it wasn’t by the Russians. It was by the French. Napoleon occupied us for about 15 years, and then the Russians helped kick the French out. Exactly. That’s pretty much forgotten, isn’t it? Even in Switzerland, Russophobia is very much en vogue, isn’t it? #Guy Mettan Yeah, no, you’re completely right. The Russians came to liberate Switzerland from the French grip, from Napoleon’s occupation at the end of the 18th century, with Suvorov in the Alps, fighting against the French troops. It was in 1799, something like that. And they came again with the Austrians— mainly it was the Austrian troops—but, as you know, the main forces that defeated Napoleon in 1813 and 1814 were the Russians, with the help of the Prussians and the Austrians. So they liberated Switzerland, they helped to free it. And what’s more important, at the Congress of Vienna, which concluded the Napoleonic Wars, it was the Russian Tsar, Alexander I, who helped to create -- 3 of 14 -- the present, contemporary Switzerland. Without the Tsar’s support, for instance, I wouldn’t be living in Geneva today. Geneva was outside the Confederation, separated by French territory. And with the help of the Tsar, we could create the actual, you know, the present borders of Switzerland. That’s the territory—the actual territory of Switzerland. And secondly, also about neutrality. It was with the help of the Tsar and his Minister of Foreign Affairs, his ambassador Kapodistria—Kapodistria was the main Russian diplomat at the time—that Switzerland could gain, let’s say, neutrality. Because before Napoleon, Switzerland was surrounded by European powers, mainly France but also the Austrian Empire, which meddled in Swiss affairs constantly. With the status of neutrality, and the recognition of this neutrality at the Congress of Vienna, it was the end of that foreign meddling—foreign interference in Swiss affairs. So it was a condition of our sovereignty and independence. #Pascal Absolutely. I mean, this is one of the things I always find fascinating—that we in Switzerland are completely unaware of it. We keep thinking we achieved neutrality on our own, but actually it was very important that the Russians supported that idea. The idea came from the Swiss, and it was promoted through—what’s his name—the Swiss diplomat. He has a beautiful statue in Geneva. #Guy Mettan Hello. Yes, Pictet de Rochemont. #Pascal Pictet de Rochemont sold the idea to the Tsar, and the Tsar then brought it into the negotiations because the Swiss didn’t have anyone there. The Swiss were not invited. But the Tsar was there, and he convinced the others to do it. And Swiss neutrality then, for 200 years—210 years—guarded this kind of peace that we have. The Russians also were, the Soviets were, pivotal for the Austrians to become neutral. They accepted Austrian neutrality as a condition to withdraw in 1955, and Austria became neutral. The Russians have been supporting neutrality for a long time, and even now they demand the neutrality of Ukraine. They don’t demand that Ukraine join them; they demand that Ukraine be neutral. Why is it, in your view, that the European side—including the Swiss—never sees that Russia actually tries to use neutrality as a way to create balance in the region? Because to me, it seems that’s what they’re trying to do. And I’m not a fan of Russia; I’m not trying to be pro-Russian. I’m just saying, look, we have these instances where the Russians tried to use neutrality to create an equilibrium—it worked for Switzerland, it worked for Austria, but it was made impossible for Ukraine. How do you interpret this? -- 4 of 14 -- #Guy Mettan Yeah, but that’s the long story, and that’s the subject of my book, you know. My view is that the stereotypes developed—formerly against the Orthodox Church and, since the 18th century, against the Russian Empire—were all transposed, all these clichés, into politics, because religion became less important as an ideology. But at that time, it was directed against Russia itself, the Russian state. Why? Because it started in France with King Louis XV. He married a Polish princess, so he was very close to the Polish side. And also, by the end of the 18th century, Russia—through Peter the Great and Catherine II, the Tsar and the Empress—had become one of the most important European powers. And, you know, the problem for France was that under Louis XIV—Louis the Great—it was the first and dominant European power on the continent. England was still emerging, but not yet so prominent or important as it became later. So it was hard for the French king to recognize