Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that the country will shut down Goethe-Institut facilities in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Yekaterinburg after Germany decided to cease operation of the Russian House in Berlin.
Lavrov announced the planned closures Sept. 3 during a lecture organized by the Znanie Society on the sidelines of the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, TASS reported.
“Of course they will be closed after our cultural center was expelled,” Lavrov said, referring to Germany’s action against the Russian House.
He also accused Germany of using the Leipzig drone incident as a “false pretext” for its decisions involving the Russian House and Russia’s Consulate General in Bonn.
Lavrov described the incident as a crash of a drone and emphasized that German authorities have only assumed that it resembles Russian drones but have not identified its origin. He called the German reasoning “assumptions, speculations and guesswork.” It is “assumptions, speculations and guesswork,” he said.
On Sept. 1, Germany’s mission to NATO said the government attributed the Aug. 4 incident at Leipzig Airport to Russia and described it as a “hybrid drone attack.”
The mission said the incident was part of a wider pattern of Russian activity in Germany and Europe involving sabotage, espionage and disinformation.
On Sept. 2, Russia’s Foreign Ministry summoned German Chargé d’Affaires Bernd Finke over what it called Germany’s “anti-Russian actions and statements,” according to an earlier TASS report.
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