Russia to close Goethe-Institut branches after Germany shuts Russian House in Berlin

Branches of the Goethe-Institut in Russia will be closed in response to Germany’s decision to shut down the Russian House in Berlin, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said today at the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, according to a report by the Interfax news agency.

“The Germans have branches of the Goethe-Institut here — in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Yekaterinburg. Of course, they will be closed after our cultural center was kicked out [of Berlin],” Lavrov said.

The Goethe-Institut’s own website currently lists offices in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Novosibirsk.

Interfax also quoted Lavrov as saying:

“In other words, they are consciously taking a step that they could not have failed to understand clearly means the end of their cultural presence in the Russian Federation, which had remained despite all these Ukrainian twists and turns in our relations with the West.”

Germany announced on Sept. 1 that it was terminating the agreement governing the Russian House in Berlin. The decision came after the German government blamed Russia for a “hybrid attack” at Leipzig/Halle Airport, where a drone carrying explosives was found near a Ukrainian transport plane in early August. Berlin also announced its decision to close Russia’s consulate general in Bonn as of Sept. 18, to tighten entry controls for Russian citizens, and to seek new EU sanctions against Moscow.

The work of the Russian House in Berlin and the Goethe-Institut in Russia is based on bilateral agreements. As recently as Aug. 10, Germany’s Foreign Ministry confirmed that the agreements governing the use of the two cultural centers’ buildings directly tied them to one another and that measures against one institution could have consequences for the other. After the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Moscow had already restricted the Goethe-Institut’s work, including by blocking the German cultural center’s bank accounts in Russia.

Since then, at least 13 offices of Russia’s state cultural outreach agency Rossotrudnichestvo, known as “Russian Houses,” have closed in various countries, according to The Insider’s calculations. In most cases, Moscow either responded by expelling diplomats — or imposed no reciprocal measures at all. The Russian House in Berlin was Rossotrudnichestvo’s largest branch abroad.