The Swiss are mobilizing huge forces in Geneva to ensure security

Geneva is used to receiving heads of state who come to the United Nations and other international institutions in the city.

However, such world-centric meetings of heads of state are not common, so Switzerland wants to avoid any overlap at the Biden and Putin meeting, which will be the first meeting of the US and Russian presidents since 2018, when Putin met with Donald Trump. .

“This is an opportunity to show what we can do,” said Yvon Langel, commander of the 1st Territorial Division of the Swiss Army.

In addition, it will be the first meeting of White House and Kremlin leaders in Geneva since 1985, when Cold War rivals US President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev first met in neutral Switzerland.

Great courtship

Arriving at the Geneva airport on Tuesday, Biden was transported in a dozen cars to a nearby Intercontinental hotel.

Geneva Police Chief Colonel Monica Bonfanti said her officers knew about escorting tuples of this size, mainly from theory textbooks.

Several blocks around the five-star Intercontinental have been fenced in with barbed wire, parking is prohibited throughout the area, and police are directing traffic.

During the summit in the city center, the shore and Lake Geneva itself will be completely closed. The airspace will also be closed.

The summit site, Villa La Grange and the surrounding park, is surrounded by a two-kilometer fence with barbed wire at the top.

“It is a historic moment of dawn,” said Stephane Theimer, deputy director of the Swiss National Police.

“The task of the Geneva police is enormous,” he told reporters ahead of the Villa La Grange summit, calling the police operation a “gigantic deployment.”

Approximately 2,000 were mobilized. 95% of Geneva police officers. all the cops in town. 900 officials from other parts of Switzerland have been sent to its aid. The French police, a few kilometers away, have also been declared ready.

The fighters are ready

Around a thousand soldiers have also been deployed, and the Swiss Air Force will protect closed airspace within a radius of up to 50 km around the city. Helicopters and fighter jets will perform this task.

But Colonel Pierre-Yves Eberle, head of the Air Force Operations Center, said the planes were flying underground during the summit “unless there were problems” with a suspicious plane.

The army deployed a battalion at the airport, a surface-to-air defense system.

The Grange is guarded by soldiers in camouflage uniforms, with backpacks and automatic weapons. Trained police dogs inspect cars parked near the perimeter of the fenced area.

Military mobile radar stations have been deployed near the lake, where on normal days it is preferable to see people walking through moored boats and eating ice.

Swiss Defense Minister Viola Amherd was released Tuesday at Pajern Air Force Base, where he monitors “how the air force secures the air [erdvės] security at the summit, “a ministry spokeswoman told AFP.

People in Geneva are urged to work from home on Wednesday due to anticipated outages: traffic jams are forecast across the city.