German politicians specializing in culture in the Bundestag criticized Russia on Tuesday as its Justice Ministry formally added public broadcaster Deutsche Welle to its growing list of outlawed “undesirable organizations.”
Culture and Media Commissioner Wolfram Weimer told DW that the Russian authorities in Moscow “are afraid that people will hear and see the truth.”
“They do not want the truth about their war of aggression in Ukraine to be made known. And they are afraid that reports about repression within Russia will be revealed,” Weimer said. “That is why they are trying everything to suppress voices of freedom like Deutsche Welle.”
Martin Rabanus, a center-left Social Democrat politician who is on the Bundestag culture select committee and DW’s supervisory board, called Russia’s move “the next step in curtailing freedom of opinion and the press.”
He said that similar restrictions on groups like Reporters Without Borders and Radio Free Europe pointed to a “systematic slashing and restriction of organizations and institutions that are providing objective information” inside Russia.
Concerns for employees and their loved ones
Claudia Roth of the environmentalist Greens, the previous commissioner for culture and the media during the last legislative term from 2021 to 2025, voiced concern for DW employees and contacts in the region.
“I am very worried about the journalists, about their families,” she said. “Because in Russia, it is dangerous to report independently against the dictator, the authoritarian ruler.”
Russian journalists sentenced to nearly 6 years
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David Schliesing of the socialist Left Party said that “independent journalism is never a crime,” but he also said he believed Russia could be responding to restrictions on Russian state-controlled broadcaster RT (formally Russia Today) inside the EU.
“It’s actually just a logical consequence of war, if you will, that if the European Commission bans Russia Today from broadcasting in our territory, the Russians naturally retaliate. I think that’s just logical,” Schliesing said, arguing that this showed how urgent it was to broker an end to the fighting and a return to less hostile atmosphere.
Changed from ‘foreign agent’ to ‘undesirable organization’
Russia’s Justice Ministry published an updated list of “undesirable organizations” on Tuesday, now including Deutsche Welle, confirming a development that Russian media first reported over the weekend.
Russia’s Duma parliament had first requested the altered designation in August 2024.
A Russian government statement posted on Telegram over the weekend, amid the first news of the impending change, had said that the Prosecutor General’s office considered DW to be “at the forefront of hostile anti-Russian propaganda.”
The new designation further tightens restrictions not just on DW’s activity in Russia, which Moscow effectively shut down years ago, but also on cooperating with or working for the organization.
People found to support or work for “undesirable organizations” can face fines or even jail time in Russia. Even sharing content from such groups can be prosecuted.
Director General says new designation ‘won’t deter us’
DW Director General Barbara Massing said that the new designation would particularly impact employees of DW’s Russian-language service, many of whom have close ties to the country.
But she also said Moscow’s attempts to sideline DW and other critical media outlets were proving counterproductive.
“Despite censorship and blocking of our services by the Russian government, DW’s Russian-language service now reaches more people than ever before,” Massing said.
DW’s Barbara Massing: Russia’s stance ‘won’t deter us’
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“We will continue to report independently — on the war of aggression against Ukraine and other topics about which little information is available in Russia. So that people can form their own opinions,” she said.
Moscow bureau shuttered days before invasion of Ukraine
Russia had already designated DW as a “foreign agent” early in 2022, soon after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Just a few weeks before the February 24 invasion, DW’s accreditation was withdrawn, leading to the closure of the Moscow bureau with Russia calling it a response to restrictions on state broadcaster RT Deutsch in Germany.
DW’s Moscow offices were shuttered in February 2022Image: picture alliance/dpa/AP
DW’s Moscow bureau subsequently relocated to Riga in Latvia, and DW’s website has been banned in all languages in Russia — at least to those unable to circumvent the restrictions.
Nevertheless DW’s Russian service reached in the region of 10 million weekly users in 2025, mostly with video content, making it one of DW’s top 10 languages by volume.
Founded in 1953, DW is an independent media outlet funded by the German government reporting around the world in 32 languages.
Russia’s list of “undesirable organizations” includes more than 275 entities, including news outlets like Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, think tanks like Chatham House, the anti-corruption NGO Transparency International and the environmental advocacy organization WWF.
It also blacklists a host of major German political think tanks: the Heinrich Böll Foundation, the Friedrich Ebert Foundation and the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, as well as the German Council on Foreign Relations.
