A year after the unlawful arrest, Sebastian Herrmann and Georg Ismar accompanied Henry Lindemeier through a day he calls his „major battle day“: 9 December 2025. The reportage is the most elaborate piece written on the subject and the only one to document a tactic of the House in real time.
What happened: for that day the operators of the Russian House had registered an event of their own. Lindemeier learned of it the night before. The police informed him that his demonstration could not take place. Around twenty officers stood outside the entrance, because of him. His verdict that evening, quoted by the SZ, is briefly bitter: the Russians have won.
The SZ assembles the institutional frame around this: 29,000 square metres, opened in 1984, one of the largest Russian cultural institutes anywhere, operated by Rossotrudnichestvo, sanctioned since July 2022. Commercial events should not be taking place there at all. The piece cites the Berlin prosecutor's investigation into possible breaches of the Foreign Trade and Payments Act and the data protection commissioner's examination of the camera surveillance.
Legally the heaviest element is the Bavarian Administrative Court's ruling of 24 June 2025. In 2023 the Bundesbank's financial sanctions unit had refused to settle invoices for the Russian House because the scale of the electricity costs indicated commercial operation and therefore a possible sanctions breach. The Russian House went to court and lost. How the electricity has been paid for since, the House leaves unanswered.
Politically the reportage documents that the demand for closure is raised across party lines, by Robin Wagener for the Greens as much as by Roderich Kiesewetter for the CDU. The Federal Foreign Office maintains its position that no instrument is available.