Hundreds of German officials and employees in Russia, especially in the cultural sector, will have to leave the country after Moscow’s decision to impose a limit on this presence on its territory, another effect of the diplomatic tension between the two countries arising of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
“The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia made public in April its decision to introduce a limit on the number of personnel in our missions abroad and in German intermediary organizations in Russia,” the Ministry confirmed of Foreign Affairs of Germany, which described the Russian sanction as a “unilateral, unjustified and incomprehensible decision”.
The punitive measure, which the German authorities tried unsuccessfully to stop after negotiations since April, will be applied from June 1. Although it includes embassy and consulate officials, it mainly affects teachers in German schools such as the one in Moscow, kindergarten teachers and even teachers working in Russian schools, as well as professors and employees of the Goethe-Institut, the institute of German language and culture abroad. It also punishes Russians who work for German institutions, who will have to leave their jobs.
The German Government has not given figures, but the German media speak of “hundreds” of civil servants to be expelled, without specifying more. According to the newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, the maximum limit of German employees who can stay in Russia established by Moscow would be 350 people. The expulsions represent “a significant cut in all areas of our presence in Russia”, pointed out the German Foreign Ministry, which is preparing a similar response. “Regarding the maximum limit of Russian presence in Germany, the German Government will ensure that, in practice, there is also a real balance”, said the ministry.
This move to cancel Germany’s cultural and educational presence in Russia follows the expulsion at the end of last month of more than twenty German diplomats, in retaliation for a previous similar decision taken by Berlin, which never disclosed the exact number of Russians sent back. German and Anglo-Saxon media claim that there were also twenty. At the time, Russia announced the expulsions as a measure of reciprocity, and the German Foreign Ministry said that Berlin and Moscow had been in contact for weeks about a reduction of Russian intelligence services in Germany.
The educational field was one of the branches of German foreign action in Russia, within the many fields of cooperation that existed before the Russian aggression in Ukraine forced Germany to make a diplomatic, economic and energetic turn.
