Judging Freedom - COL. Jacques Baud : How the EU is Trying to Silence Me!

Episode Date: January 8, 2026

COL. Jacques Baud : How the EU is Trying to Silence Me!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Undeclared wars are commonplace. Pragically, our government engages in preemptive war, otherwise known as aggression with no complaints from the American people. Sadly, we have become accustomed to living with the illegitimate use of force by government. To develop a truly free society, the issue of initiating force must be understood and rejected. What if sometimes to love your country you had to alter or abolish the government? What if Jefferson was right? What if that government is best which governs least?

What if it is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong? What if it is better to perish fighting for freedom than to live as a slave? What if freedom's greatest hour of danger is now? Hi, everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Thursday, January 8th, 2006. Our very special guest today is Colonel Jacques Bo. Colonel, you are a lifelong career veteran of the Swiss Army. You are a world-renowned intelligence analyst.

you are the author of highly regarded and internationally acclaimed and respected books and articles. You offer controversial and yet well-grounded opinions that many of us have relied on in our professional work. In December of 2025, just a month ago, without charges being filed or hearing being held or any due process whatsoever, you were sanctioned by the European Union, which included a freeze on your assets and a travel ban. We believe in the freedom of speech, as I know you do, and as we thought the Europeans did, we welcome you to judging freedom. We give you this opportunity to tell our large international audience what happened to you and how it happened. How is it that any person could be sanctioned for speech, let alone a person who was dedicated his entire professional life to the military of Switzerland?

Well, first of all, thank you very much for inviting me. Good morning to the United States and happy to be on your show. Well, that's an interesting question because, in fact, I've never done anything. that breached any law in Europe, and anywhere, by the way, because I'm accused of doing some Russian propaganda or even being on pro-Russian channels or programs. Now, there is no law against propaganda. Nobody knows exactly what this word mean. I mean, we know what it means, but we don't know what it covers legally. and there is no law against that in Europe, neither in my country or in the European Union, the same as pro-Russian website. I don't know exactly what that means. Is your website a pro-Russian one? We don't really know.

So I'm accused of that. And the thing is, as you rightly said, this is not a judiciary decision. This is not a decision that has been taken by any court. not judged by anybody, in fact. I was not in front of a jury. I could not present my case. I could not defend my case. I could not have a lawyer to explain the court or what it is about. And the sanction came. And now I have to fight against the sanction. So it's exactly the opposite of usual judgment in a court. You have a process and as a result of the process, you have a sanction. Here, in my case, is exactly the opposite. They set the sanction and then you have a process trying to deconstruct the accusation. So to explain that, there's an explanation to that, is the fact that this sanction is not the result, as I said, of a judiciary process, but is in fact a foreign policy

decision. And that's important to understand because this decision was not taken, as I said, by your court, but by the Council of the Foreign Ministers of the European Union. And in fact, if you read carefully the text of the sanction, I'm not allowed to enter the EU. The problem is that I'm living in the EU and therefore I cannot you know I cannot enter since I'm already here

so this translates this translates as a travel ban within the EU meaning that living in Brussels in Belgium are not allowed to go back to my country which is Switzerland for instance I should apply and having

an authorization to travel to my country. And when I'm in my country, I cannot go back to the place where I live, which is Brussels. I mean, as you see in the background, all my books are here, my computer, everything I need to live,

is here in Brussels. Let me just interrupt you for a minute, Colonel. Forgive me. Tell us what the sanctions consist of besides the travel ban. Do you have a bank account? Do you have credit cards? can you buy toothpaste or fuel for your car? I mean, how draconian is this?

Absolutely. Well, there's a second part of it. All my bank accounts in the EU are frozen. In fact, all my resources are frozen. Meaning that I cannot access my bank account. I have, as anyone, you have a bank account and a card to pay for your food, bread, or toothpaste, as you said, whatever. even my bills.

And since they're frozen, I cannot access that. So I cannot pay my bills. I cannot pay my electricity bill. Fortunately, I paid my bill before the sanctions. So that's the reason why I have some electricity now. But I cannot access digital services, meaning that I cannot even pay by a computer if you want. And I cannot buy food right now.

I mean, some friendly and very generous, neighbors brought me food today. I cannot buy food. I mean, unless I have a little bit of cash, and with this cash, I can still buy food. But if I hadn't any cash on me, there's no way I could buy in a supermarket or wherever, because my card, I tried my card.

It's indicated at a stolen. Wow. What legal recourse do you have? If this happened in the U.S., a person would go to a federal judge, I never heard of it happening here, but if it did, a person would go to a federal judge with a lawyer, and the federal judge would immediately stop it until there could be a hearing. Is there such a proceeding available to you, either in Brussels or Switzerland or anywhere in the EU? Well, certainly not in Switzerland since I was, it's an EU sanction.

By the way, if I were in Switzerland, I wouldn't, my, Switzerland, has not adopted the sanctioned package. And so I wouldn't be sanctioned if I were in Switzerland. I would still have my assets frozen in the European Union. But in Switzerland itself, I could live normally within Switzerland, if you want. I couldn't go out of Switzerland, but that's another problem. So as a recourse, no, I don't have any. And that's, I mean, I should be very careful with that.

In the sense that since it's a political decision, I cannot go against the decision itself. I can't go to the European Court of Justice and trying to make my case saying that the decision was not just. And the Court of Justice may then study the case and have an assessment on that and say, well, that was not justified. And then they can advise the Council of Foreign Minister to change their mind. But since it's not a judiciary decision, I cannot have, if you have in a judiciary system, and you know that much better than me, of course, when you have a decision made by a court, you use another court, or maybe the same, it depends, but you take another court in order to go against that judgment and you can revise a judgment. It's not the case here. The decision was taken by a

political counsel, not by a judiciary, meaning that the judiciary decision can only advise the final ministers to change their mind. That's all. How can a person be punished for a political reason. I mean, as I understand it, this political body that somehow has the authority to make your life miserable made a political judgment because they didn't like the words that you uttered when you quoted, correct me if I'm wrong, a former official in Ukraine expressing his opinion about how poorly the military was doing, you quoted somebody else, it was making a truthful statement. And for that, for that, you've been made to suffer like this. That's exactly, that's exactly the problem. Well, the issue also, probably if we look at the process

itself, as I said, it's a foreign policy measure. And if we read the text of the sanction, we see that. And if you look at the list of all those people who have been sanctioned in the same package as me, there are about 60 people who have been sanctioned, all of them. All of them, are living outside of the EU. They are mostly living in Russia, and there are either Russian nationals or bin-nationals, but they are living outside of Europe, meaning that the sanctions themselves,

they don't have the same impact as mine. They are the same ones, but since they are living outside of the EU, the sanctions do not reach them, if you want. I mean, I have, Xavier Moreau is a French guy, who is binational, has both French and Russian citizenship. He's living in Moscow.

But of course, he has a Russian bank account, so he can live completely normally in Russia. If he would settle in France or go back to France and settle there, he would then have problem, of course, the same as me. But since he's living there, he has his family. He's married with Russian as his family. Colonel, you are not only. a Swiss citizen you are a Swiss veteran what I mean a veteran of the Swiss military

why it's why I call you by your earned title of Colonel what has the Swiss government done for you besides dispatching some crackpot Lieutenant Colonel to defame you well that's that's a that's an interesting question in fact lot of people are asking this question because so far so apparently My name was put on the sanction list by the French government. I'm not 100% sure about this, but this is apparently, according to the available information, this is what happened. The thing is that apparently again, the French government informed the Swiss government that I would be on that list. Now, what happened at this stage is not really clear, but what is certainly.

is that the Swiss government didn't make any opposition on that because I'm on the sanctioned list. So there is something wrong that happened prior to the publication of the sanctions. And apparently the Swiss government, I mean, at least it didn't impose itself to avoid my presence on the list. Let's put it that way. So, and now I think the Swiss government starts to realize that the sanctions that are applied to me start to be a problem. You know, Switzerland is a country that doesn't belong to the EU, and there are currently some, let's say, ideas of getting closer to the EU, and we have now a set of treaties that need to be approved by the EU. people in order to enhance the cooperation between Switzerland and the EU. But now my case come into the game, and a lot of people say, well, why would be enhanced

our cooperation with the EU if the EU sanctions people like this without any due process, by freezing assets, and so on. In Switzerland, we are not far away from what you know in the U.S. in terms of freedom of speech, freedom of opinion. You know, the Swiss people vote for everything. We vote for literally everything. And therefore, the freedom of opinion, the freedom of speech is something

which is viewed very in a similar way as you do in the United States. And now the sanctions come here and people say, well, EU is just a dictatorship. Wow. When this happened to you, actually, just two days ago, the Wall Street Journal wrote, the colonel's offense appearing on media outlets Brussels dislikes

and promoting what Brussels calls pro-Russian propaganda. What did you say that Brussels disliked, as if we care what Brussels disliked, except they have the power to harm you if they dislike what you say? Well, that's the whole question. I mean, you know, I'm not, as opposed to others who may show a very strong position in favor of Russia or in favor of Ukraine. I never claimed to be in favor of one of the parties on the contrary.

In fact, I was invited many times, but by Russian official news outlets like RT or. Sputnik, and I always declined. And I explained the Russian journalist that I have nothing against Russia, but I didn't want to have my analysis understood as propaganda in Europe, and therefore I didn't want to appear on official medias in Russia. And in my books, because everything I say is essentially in my books, and in my books, as a kind of challenge, I decided to, because, you know, as you said, I'm intelligent, former strategic intelligence officer. So for me, the key point is decision-making. And my view is on the conflict, I mean, old conflict, basically, but especially the Ukrainian one, is that because we don't

understand the conflict, we cannot make proper decisions regarding the conflict. So the idea for me is to have the proper picture of the conflict. But the challenge I decide to impose to myself was that it is possible to understand the conflict even by ignoring completely what the Russians say. And to have an objective and impartial understanding of the conflict even without Russian information. And in my books, I never use Russian information. I mean, you will not find information from RT, T, Tas, or things like that,

except when there is a specific quote, when I quote Vladimir, then I think the exact wording, because I'm very precise in my book, and I want to use the exact words that were used. But beyond this, I never use Russian sources, and I use mainly mostly U.S. sources, in fact, and Ukrainian sources. What is your opinion, and let me also add about your background, that your international reputation as an intelligence analyst was such that

both the United Nations and NATO hired you to advise them. What is your opinion of the origins of the special military operation, and what is your opinion of the likely military outcome of the special military operation? Well, the real origin, and in fact, again, there is nothing here to invent. We can very well understand what happened. And, you know, I was member of NATO as the Ukrainian crisis started in 2014. And I was sent by NATO in the Ukraine because I was in charge of countering proliferation of small arms. And of course, everybody was asking, where do the rebels get their weapons from? And so I was obviously observing the conflict.

And I am also one of the UN experts on the rule of law. And when the Ukrainian forces started to reorganize themselves, I was sent there. Now, what triggered really the whole conflict and, in fact, what the mechanical effect of having the Russians entering Ukraine was the issue of the language. That's what triggered a revolution, literally a revolution. When you say the issue of the language, you mean that the Ukrainian government made it illegal for people in eastern Ukraine to speak Russian? It's not exactly that.

What happened is that in the first decision of the non-elected government on the 23rd of February 2014, the third decision was to abolish the law that made the Russian language an official language. That's the trigger. And because since 2012, you had a law, the law equivalent of Kalinysenko, that made both Russian and Ukrainian official language, meaning that all interaction between citizens and the administration could occur in the two languages. Once one was banned as an official language, then everybody

had to use only Ukrainian. That's what happened. And when I was in Adjessa in September 2014, that was the time where you had the whole, not just the Dumbass, because today we talk about the

Dumbas, but in fact the whole southern part of Ukraine, including Adessa, and the whole a sudden half of Ukraine was in revolution, literally. And I remember I was there to promote Ukrainian NCOs, by the way. I participated to the ceremony of a promotion of Ukrainian NCOs. And that was literally in a war atmosphere.

Everything was guarded. I mean, they expected some rebel. entering the building at any time. So it was extremely tense, extremely tense. And that's later the Ukrainian authorities managed to repress this revolution. And you had only the Dombas that remained the stronghold of those rebels. And that stayed until 2022. But the essence remains the same.

was, in fact, an insurrection of those Russian-speaking people who were not allowed to use their language for official business, if you want. But the Russian language was not forbidden. It's very important to say it. Interesting. Interesting. How do you think the special military operation will end? I mean, isn't it rather obvious that the Ukrainian military will collapse? Well, that's, as you said, it's obvious. And in fact, the U.S. and the Pentagon identified that as early as November 2022. And from that point, they advised Zelensky to start a negotiation process after that Zelensky, since the spring of 2022. In fact, Zelensky had started three negotiation process with Russia.

All these three processes were stopped by the Europeans. It's very interesting. I mean, the first started on the very first day of the Russian operation, and namely on the 25th of February 2022. And Zelenskyy called the Swiss Minister of Foreign Affairs in order to organize a peace conference on the very first day. That was stopped by the European Union. And then there were the famous case that was also where you had the document published by the New York Times in March, April 2022, that was also stopped by mainly the Brits, I mean, Boris Johnson, but also the Germans and the French.

They also participated in stopping this initiative. That was an initiative of Zelensky. And you had a third initiative from Zelensky that came out in mid-end, and over. August 2022, and that was also stopped by the Europeans. And after that, the European Union said there is no appeasement. And from that point, the Ukrainian issued, I mean, Zelensky issued a decree forbidding to negotiate with Russia as long as Vladimir Putin is in power. But after that, one month later, the Pentagon came to Zensky and said, well, you should start

negotiating with the Russians because the whole thing will fail. And they anticipated what would happen later in summer 2023, this famous counter-offensive that eventually collapsed and failed. And in fact, we know since the very beginning that the Ukrainians would not win this war. We know that. And today, what's happening is that Ukrainian are now resisting, and I am not, I can only say that the Ukrainian soldiers are fighting bravely because they are outnumbered, out-equipped, outwept, armed, and whatever.

So they are certainly, I mean, the idea of any victory or the world victory should be defined, of course, but the victory of Ukraine is, in my view, excluded. And the Russians have said that. I mean, after Zelensky published his decree to prohibit any negotiation with Russia, the General Surovikin, the commander-in-chief of the Russian army forces in Ukraine, said, well, from now on, will not manage, will not do big operations on the ground,

but will wait for the enemy, we'll wait for the Ukrainian to advance, and we'll grind them down. Wow. The idea was to grind them down. And that's exactly what they are doing. Last question, is the EU pleased with this interview you're now giving us? Well, I don't know if they are pleased. The fact of the matter is that when you start sanctioning someone because of its speech, the result you obtain is a higher visibility.

I've never got such a visibility than now. And my books, especially in the U.S. are booming. I mean, that's the result of such a policy. I mean, you know, it's always a bad idea to, this is a so-called Schrazen effect. When you start preventing someone to speak, of course, does this attract more attention. In addition to that, that gives me also credibility. Because if I were saying just allow me to use that word bullshit, they would not care about me.

So that what I'm saying is disturbing, even if I'm not making propaganda, in fact. Just the fact that I'm using objective Western source is disturbing them, meaning that that must be relevant. And that's also some, again, I think this kind of, of policies of sanction. I mean, that you use sanction to have an economic effect because you don't want, for instance,

to find, to fund weaponry or the Russian government. Okay, I may understand that. But sanctioning speech is totally counterproductive. And that's exactly what's happening with me. I never had so many requests for interviews. Well, Colonel, it's funny the way the world works. I knew of you. A lot of my viewers knew of you.

A lot of my friends knew of you, but it was only the sanction that caused us to reach out to you. Colonel, you're a great man. You're a patriot. You're a hero to free speech. I hope this nightmare ends for you soon. But thank you very much for your time today. you have a huge audience that's very appreciative of you and I hope you can come back and visit

with us again soon thank you thank you for your trust and thank you for your support and thank you for inviting me thank you colonel all the best wow a great man uh for sure coming up more great man at 11 o'clock this morning Aaron Matte at one this afternoon a dear friend and a man I admire so much, Glenn Greenwald, at 2 o'clock, another man I admire much, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson. At 4 o'clock, another man I admire much, Professor John Mearsheimer, Judge Napolitano for judging freedom. Thank you.