So Spuds McKenzie maintains that Single Manned Operation is common practice in various ATC units worldwide...
Not in the civilised world old boy, where safety culture has been developed and refined through long and bitter experience. For an ATCO to leave an approach control position in order to deal with high level traffic is strictly forbidden. Not even the most basic ATC unit in darkest Africa would have behaved with such crass incompetence. From what we now know the ICAO position broadcast procedure on 126.90 could just as well have been applied to flights operating in the richest country in Europe!
The catalogue of errors made by Skyguide on that fateful evening defies belief and is now the subject of a criminal inquiry by the Swiss government.
My sympathy is with the Russian Captain. It was 2 to 1 against - the unfamiliar TCAS telling him to climb versus the Skyguide controller and his Chief Pilot (who was sitting next to him) ordering him forcefully to descend.