Neue Zürcher Zeitung Resorts to Slander against General Kujat

“From the highest-ranking NATO officer to the ‘Soviet General’? The inexplicable transformation of Harald Kujat” is the title given by the July 7 Neue Zürcher Zeitung to its crude “profile” of German General (ret) Harald Kujat. Its author is the Swiss daily’s defense editor, Marco Seliger, who is not a “neutral Swiss”, but a German national with excellent pro-NATO credentials. From his position as editor-in-chief of Loyal, the journal of the German military reservist organization, he became in 2022 public relations officer of the company Heckler & Koch, Germany’s principle manufacturer of assault rifles and other weapons systems for NATO member states, which have gone almost exclusively to Ukraine in the recent period.

As for General Kujat, the object of the slander, he served as Inspector General of the Bundeswehr and as chairman of NATO’s Military Committee, which is the highest ranking officer in NATO. He is well known to our readers for fighting, through his pen, and in interviews and public appearances, NATO’s pro war policies against Russia and China, which threaten to lead to nuclear war.

The NZZ article was supposed to be based on an interview, which was abruptly ended by the General when he realized he was not being questioned by what he thought was the leading daily of a reputedly neutral country, but was being set up for a hatchet job by a fanatical German pro-war ideologue. At the very beginning of the lengthy article, Seliger cites a statement made eight years ago by former U.S. ambassador to Berlin John Kornblum, who called Kujat the “Soviet general”. The article makes no attempt to disprove any of the general’s arguments, simply dismissing them as Russian disinformation. The rest of the piece is an attempt at character assassination by citing statements amounting to gossip made by former high ranking German military officers who are all now on the anti-Russian bandwagon.

The real scandal in all this is the extent to which the leading Swiss daily goes to compromise any claim to neutrality, let alone to good journalism. One wonders if Switzerland will soon become the 33rd country to join NATO…