The German Foreign Ministry summoned the Russian ambassador to Berlin on Thursday after Russian authorities announced the expulsion of two employees of the German public broadcaster ARD.
“Russia’s expulsion of ARD employees is unacceptable, and the justification is simply false and unfair. We condemn this in the strongest terms,” Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said of the summons.
On Wednesday, regional broadcaster WDR, which is responsible for covering Russia for the ARD network, confirmed that two ARD employees – a correspondent and a technician – must give back their accreditation and leave Russia by December 16.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said the measure was a response to the expulsion of Russian state television correspondents by German authorities – a claim Berlin denies.
Baerbock accused Moscow of a “propaganda war with false claims.”
“It is simply not true that we have restrictions on press freedom in Germany or Europe,” she said.
Russian state television station 1. Kanal had previously said it had been ordered to close its Berlin office – a claim German authorities have denied.
Residence permits refused
The Berlin state immigration office told dpa when asked that the agency had refused to issue residence permits to five people from various Russian media, including four journalists and one spouse. In some cases, legal proceedings are still ongoing.
In one case, the reason given was that Russian media spread disinformation and propaganda to discredit the West and the European Union. The immigration agency also referred to the EU and a sanctions package affecting Russian media.
Baerbock noted that Germany was governed by the rule of law, meaning the decision could be appealed.
In Moscow, Zakharova said the Russian channel’s journalists had been harassed in Germany for more than a year, noting that Moscow had warned the German Foreign Ministry six months ago that there would be consequences.
Russia’s ambassador to Germany, Sergei Nechayev, would now remind Baerbock’s office of this, Zakharova added.
Tougher conditions in Moscow
Russia has made the job of foreign journalists much more difficult since the beginning of Russia’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Foreign correspondents from countries labeled “unfriendly” by Russia will now only receive the required press accreditations for three months, instead of one year.
The dangers of reporting have also increased. A correspondent for the Wall Street Journal newspaper, Evan Gershkovich, was arrested by the FSB in March 2023 during a reporting trip on espionage charges.
He was held in prison for more than a year, sentenced to 16 years in prison before being released on August 1 under a major prison swap deal.
Shortly before the war, Russian authorities had closed the Moscow office of the German state broadcaster Deutsche Welle.
The Russian government justified the closure in response to an earlier decision by German authorities to deny a broadcasting license to the German-language channel of Russian state broadcaster RT.
