In Berlin, the number of state schools offering Russian as a foreign language has recently increased. In the 2024/25 academic year, students in 60 schools received instruction in Russian, the Senate Department for Education reported in response to a parliamentary inquiry published on Friday, according to UNN, citing Tagesspiegel.
Details
In the 2023/24 academic year, this number was 54 schools, and in the 2022/23 academic year – 50. At the same time, the number of active teachers trained in Russian has steadily decreased over the past five years.
While 1005 people were employed in the 2020/21 academic year, the Department of Education counted only 790 teachers for the past academic year. Currently, 14 trainee teachers are undergoing training in Russian.
The Senate administration could not provide any information about the possible impact of Russia's aggression in Ukraine, which has been ongoing since February 2022, on the teaching of the Russian language. However, it stated that there are no administrative regulations arising from this situation.
Russian is also the most common Slavic language. Foreign language instruction expands "students' opportunities to participate in social, societal, and cultural negotiation processes in a valuable, critically reflective, and constructive way."
Addition
Documents confirming Putin's territorial claims to Crimea, eastern Ukraine, and Kazakhstan as early as 1994 have been found in the archives of the German Foreign Ministry. The former German Consul General in St. Petersburg reported that Putin claimed these territories belonged to Russia.