2023-05-27 21:35:02
BERLIN (AFP) – Hundreds of public servants and local employees working at German institutions in Russia will have to leave the country in the coming days or be fired on orders from Moscow authorities, the German foreign ministry announced today.
The Berlin Foreign Ministry stated that Russia will reduce the number of people that can be employed by German embassies and consulates or educational and cultural institutions in Russia starting in June.
Hundreds of people are expected to be affected, including embassy and consulate officials, but mainly German teachers and employees of Germany’s official cultural institution, the Goethe institute, German schools and Russian schools, the foreign ministry said.
Local employees in both Germany and Russia will be affected, the ministry said, without disclosing the exact number of those affected.
German employees have until June 1 to leave the country.
Russian employees will not be asked to leave the country, but they will lose their jobs because German institutions can no longer employ them, the ministry said.
The German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung reported the news for the first time today. “Moscow has declared diplomatic war on Berlin,” the paper described.
“This is a unilateral, irrational and incomprehensible decision,” Germany’s foreign ministry said in a statement.
Germany was a close economic partner of Russia before Moscow invaded Ukraine last February, after which Berlin chose to distance itself from Moscow and support Kiev financially and militarily.
According to the German security service, since the outbreak of the Ukraine war, Russian espionage in Germany has increased at a rate rarely seen in recent years.
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