Germany demands to cancel the "foreign agent" status of the "International Union of German Culture" in Russia.
The German government strongly condemns the assignment of "foreign agent" status in Russia to the non-profit organization International Union of German Culture (IUCN) and demands that this step be reversed immediately, the Federal Interior Ministry said in response to DW's inquiry.
Berlin sees the assignment of this status as "part of the growing oppression and criminalization of civil society structures." As Interior Ministry spokesman Henning Zanti said, Russia's sanctions against the German minority once again demonstrate the historical consequences of World War II that affected Russian Germans and which the German government sought to mitigate.
According to him, Germany is examining the possibilities of maintaining support for the German minority in the Russian Federation, which numbers more than 440,000 people. Berlin promised that it reaffirmed its commitment to mitigating the military fate that befell this minority as a result of World War II. The essence of this fate, the statement says, lies in the collective punishment of the German minority in the Soviet Union for crimes committed by Nazi Germany: deportation and evictions, forced labor in the labor army, the system of commanders' offices and special settlements. Related to this are decades of discrimination, stigmatization and the threat of losing cultural identity.
On October 23, the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation added to the list of "foreign agents" the publisher of the German newspaper of Moscow (German newspaper of Moscow, MDZ), a company of the Maui Group and MSNK.