Connexion
Berlin weighs closing the Russian House for spying, yet a federal ministry just moved in beside it
Germany has placed part of a federal ministry directly next to a Berlin building that France links to Russian intelligence, the newspaper Tagesspiegel reported. The branch office shares a wall with the Russian House, a cultural center long suspected of serving as a Kremlin front. One of its units works on protecting Germany's critical networks from attack.
A shared wall in the heart of Berlin
The Federal Ministry for Digital Affairs opened a branch at Taubenstraße 42/43 on 1 July. It sits wall-to-wall with the Russian House on Friedrichstraße, reporter Claudia von Salzen found. The ministry moved in because its main headquarters nearby had run out of space.
Two of the ministry's six departments now operate there. One covers digital infrastructure, including a unit for the security and resilience of public telecom networks.
The other handles digital identities, trust services, and the cybersecurity industry. Both are fields a hostile intelligence service would want to watch.
The throwaway agents Moscow sent after a Bavarian drone boss arming Ukraine—and how Germany stopped them
Why the address raises alarms
The Russian House is officially a science and culture center. It opened on Friedrichstraße in 1984 to promote friendship with the Soviet Union.
Rossotrudnichestvo, a Russian state agency, runs it. The EU sanctioned that agency in July 2022 as the Kremlin's main tool for hybrid influence. In Germany, it allegedly helped organize pro-Russian rallies, and many of its staff abroad are Russian intelligence officers.
A leaked French Interior Ministry letter states the building serves as cover for Russian intelligence. The Russian House rejected that and claimed it is a purely cultural institution.
Other branches of government took the threat seriously
Across town, German lawmakers near the Russian Embassy hardened their offices years ago. They were told to avoid Bluetooth devices and to fit their windows with anti-espionage film.
Berlin is also reviewing whether to close the Russian House over the espionage suspicions, TVP World reported. A senior lawmaker, Roderich Kiesewetter of the CDU, called the ministry's choice a clear failure of risk awareness.
The ministry said it picked the site because the building is federally owned and the right size. It did not answer whether the proximity to the Russian House counts as a security risk.
Russia's shadow war has already reached Germany
Germany has become one of the busiest fronts in Russia's campaign of drone incursions, sabotage, and spying. By December, Germany had logged more than 1,000 suspicious drone flights in 2025 alone. The drones have swarmed both civilian airports and military sites, shutting Munich Airport over two days in October 2025 and stranding thousands of travelers. Analysts judge it highly likely that Russia flew some 144 surveillance drones over a dozen NATO countries between August 2024 and February 2026, including near Ramstein Air Base and NATO nuclear sites. In early August 2026, security staff found an explosives-laden drone beside a Ukrainian cargo plane at Leipzig-Halle airport, an incident Western intelligence tied to Moscow.
Much of the ground work runs through disposable agents recruited online. In March 2026, authorities arrested operatives who had surveilled the head of a Bavarian drone firm arming Ukraine, a case its domestic service treats as a planned assassination. Prosecutors separately charged three men over a plot to mail exploding parcels from Germany, described as a test run for future arson attacks.
