Russia uses the network of “Russian Houses,” which operate under the state agency Rossotrudnichestvo, not only to promote the language and culture but also to work with compatriots, shape a loyal information environment, and preserve political and social influence in the countries where it is present. Rossotrudnichestvo itself has been under EU sanctions since July 2022. In Europe and elsewhere, such venues have repeatedly drawn the attention of intelligence services and journalists over suspicions that they serve as cover for espionage and other intelligence activity, the cultivation of promising contacts, and work with the diaspora.
During August and September 2026, the “Russian House” in Berlin repeatedly found itself at the center of German and European media coverage. On 1 September, the German federal government announced that it would shut the center down and denounced the 2011 agreement that had governed its activity. The decision was part of Berlin’s response to Russian hybrid operations after the German government attributed the attack on Leipzig/Halle Airport to Russia.
Questions about the center’s work had arisen earlier. On 6 August 2026, WDR and the Süddeutsche Zeitung, citing a document from France’s Interior Ministry, reported that the Berlin “Russian House” was viewed as a structure that Russian intelligence services could use as cover for intelligence activity and work with the diaspora. On 26 August the same outlets published a piece on a secret 1968 KGB training manual in which foreign cultural and civic structures were treated as an environment for establishing promising contacts, identifying potential sources, and conducting subsequent recruitment. Experts interviewed by the journalists noted that after the mass expulsion of Russian diplomats, the value of such organizations to the Kremlin’s intelligence services may only have grown.
The closure of the Berlin branch, however, did not eliminate Rossotrudnichestvo’s physical infrastructure in Germany. On 3 September 2026, CORRECTIV reported that the agency’s German representation continues to manage the building at Zittauer Straße 29 in Dresden. In documents of Russia’s Accounts Chamber, the property appears as the “building of the Russian Center of Science and Culture,” and its long-term user is the Deutsch-Russisches Kulturinstitut (DRKI), which was given the premises rent-free from 2002 to 2019. In its functions the institute largely duplicates a “Russian House”: it runs Russian-language courses and cultural events, maintains a library, and helps Russian citizens prepare consular documents. CORRECTIV also drew attention to politicized initiatives around the venue. In late 2025, for example, a meeting was planned there on the “legal status of real estate” in Ukrainian territories occupied by Russia. It was precisely the existence in Dresden of ready-made infrastructure with a similar profile that led Valentin Lippmann, a member of the Saxony state parliament from Alliance 90/The Greens, to warn after the Berlin closure that Russian activity risked being shifted there.
Russia’s presence in Germany, however, does not rest only on sites linked to Rossotrudnichestvo. It is far harder for the German authorities to counter a network of formally independent civic associations that are not tied to a single institution. One of the most telling examples is Gesellschaft für Deutsch-Russische Freundschaft e.V. (GDRF). According to GDRF’s own figures, after a reorganization its membership rose from 83 in October 2024 to 262 in June 2025, while regional groups began to form in other federal states. The organization’s reaction to the closure of the “Russian House” was equally revealing: already on 2 September, GDRF came to its defense, presenting the German authorities’ actions as an anti-Russian campaign and accusing the media of deliberately constructing a negative image of Russia.
In April 2023, GDRF reprinted a text by the German Freethinkers Association, “Russland ist nicht unser Feind,” in which Russia’s full-scale invasion was framed as intervention in a war that had supposedly already been underway since 2014, NATO was called the aggressor, sanctions an “economic war,” and German media were accused of creating the “enemy image” of Russia that the authorities needed. The authors also demanded that sanctions be lifted and Nord Stream 2 restored. In January 2024, GDRF’s site carried a piece titled “NATO kriegsbereit gegen Russland” — “NATO ready for war against Russia” — and in March the predecessor organization of GDRF congratulated Vladimir Putin on his “convincing re-election.” In this way GDRF not only maintains ties with Russian structures but also regularly spreads in the German information space narratives that blame the West for the confrontation, present NATO as a source of threat, and claim that sanctions harm Germany first of all.
A similar mechanism operates at the regional level through Deutsch-Russische Friedenstage Bremen. In October 2024 the organization hosted a lecture by Austrian publicist Hannes Hofbauer, “Feindbild Russland,” in which the policy of the Federal Republic and of German media was presented as a continuation of the construction of a “Russophobic” image of Russia, and the current confrontation was explained as supposedly Western expansion. In the organization’s materials, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is likewise viewed through the prism of NATO enlargement, the Revolution of Dignity, the non-implementation of the Minsk agreements, and U.S.–Russian rivalry. The ideological component is combined with direct contacts with Russian diplomacy: on 22 October 2026 in Bremen, a speech by Andrei Bagai of the Russian embassy is scheduled, and the organizers justify the event by claiming that in German media it is almost impossible to hear the Russian position “in the original.”
In the end, closing the “Russian House” does not dismantle the entire influence infrastructure built around it. The decision to shut it down was therefore only a first step in countering Russia’s system of influence in Germany. The German authorities now face a much harder task: using lawful means to counter a network of other nodes that continue to operate through cultural, civic, and information structures. Time for such a response is growing shorter, because against the backdrop of the strengthening of the far right and other forces that call for closer relations with Moscow, Russia’s influence infrastructure in Germany is gaining additional opportunities to survive and expand. If Berlin confines itself to closing official structures such as the “Russian House” and does not address the wider network of related organizations, the problem of Russian influence will not disappear. It will only become harder to control.
