A permanent
diplomatic mission was initially established by the
Tsardom of Russia in Berlin in 1706, at the time the capital of the
Kingdom of Prussia. It moved to the on
Unter den Linden in 1832 after the building was purchased by
Tsar Nicholas I and served as the embassy to the
German Empire until closed at the outbreak of the
First World War in 1914. It was reopened as the embassy of the
Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic in 1917 and then of the
Soviet Union from 1922. Upon the
German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, the embassy became an
internment camp before being occupied by the
Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories from 1942. The Palais Kurland was destroyed by bombing raids in Berlin during the
Second World War. The Soviet Union constructed the current embassy building, three times larger than the Palais Kurland with neighbourland of destroyed
Hotel Bristol and combining both
Russian and
Soviet architecture, which opened on 7 November 1952 to celebrate
October Revolution Day. It was built in
East Berlin to serve as the Soviet embassy to
East Germany, as the site of the Kurland Palace was located in the
Soviet Occupation Zone after the war. In 1961 the
Berlin Wall was constructed a short distance from the embassy. Following the
reunification of Germany in 1990 and the
dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the embassy was inherited by the
Federal Republic of Germany and the
Russian Federation, respectively. On 5 November 2021, it was revealed that a Russian diplomat had died at the embassy, apparently having fallen out of a higher story of the building. It was later revealed by
Der Spiegel that German intelligence services believed he was an
FSB agent, and
Bellingcat stated that he was the son of a senior FSB official. In 2022,
Russia attacked Ukraine and diplomatic relations between Russia and Germany were limited to the bare minimum. Germany expelled a total of 40 Russian diplomats in April 2022 and another 30 in 2023. This apparently included almost the entire technical staff of the secret services. In 2023, Russia reduced its total representation in Germany to officially 350 people (diplomats, teachers, employees at foundations). The
German federal government ordered the closure of
consulates. Russia decided to only operate the embassy in Berlin and the consulate general in Bonn. ==References==