Germany to terminate agreement governing Russian House operations in Berlin
Germany will terminate the agreement under which the Russian House operates on Friedrichstrasse in Berlin. Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul announced this. The decision was one of the measures in response to an attempted drone attack on Leipzig/Halle Airport on August 4, which the German side links to Russia, Deutsche Welle reports.
The building on Friedrichstrasse
The Russian House is located in the center of the German capital. The seven-story building, with an area of nearly 30,000 square meters, was opened in 1984, during the era of the GDR. At the time, its purpose was to promote friendship with the Soviet Union through concerts, film screenings, and literary readings; the building also housed a small bookstore.
Today, the institution is managed by Rossotrudnichestvo, an agency of the Russian Federation, an aggressor state, which promotes the Russian language abroad. In 2022, the European Union placed the agency on its sanctions list. At the time, the EU stated that its aim was to shape broader public perception of Ukraine's temporarily occupied territories as Russian.
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Criticism and legal arrangements
The organizers say that 200,000 people attend Russian House events each year. At the same time, critics call the institution a hub of propaganda and espionage. Berlin media have repeatedly reported on screenings at its local cinema of films depicting Ukrainian citizens as Nazis. French authorities have also linked the building to possible activities of Russian intelligence services.
In early August 2026, German Foreign Ministry spokesperson Martin Giese said that the federal government was comprehensively and continuously reviewing the international legal basis for the Russian House's activities. He noted that the institution's fate was linked to the future of the Goethe-Institut in Moscow, and that actions against one of them would have direct consequences for the other.
Germany and Russia are still bound by bilateral agreements concerning cultural institutions and cultural cooperation. The Goethe-Institut was forced to significantly reduce its operations in Russia in May 2023 due to restrictions on the number of German officials. Its bank accounts in Russia were also frozen after the Berlin prosecutor's office launched a preliminary investigation into a possible violation of sanctions by the Russian House.
