In Berlin they are proposing to confiscate 66 Russian apartments, but the city Senate is so far simply shrugging its shoulders.
While Moscow continues to destroy Ukrainian population centers, its own real estate in East Berlin has been empty and falling into disrepair for 30 years. Three houses remain in Russian ownership – and no one really knows how this happened, writes Amal Berlin.
Representative of the CDU party Liliya Usik, an ethnic Ukrainian from Donetsk now occupied by Russia, proposes to confiscate at least 66 apartments under the EU sanctions package. The Senate claims that they themselves have been wanting to buy the property for several years, but Moscow is not responding, and there are no legal grounds for confiscation
Karlshorst is one of the best areas in the east of Berlin. So Russian “ghost houses” irritate local residents. In addition, there are now problems with housing in Berlin and real estate, which has been destroyed without an owner for 30 years, could have been renovated and occupied a long time ago.
Berlin representative of the CDU party Liliya Usik is an ethnic Ukrainian from the now Russian-occupied Donbass. She proposes to check whether, with the help of sanctions introduced in 2022, it is possible to confiscate houses in Karlshorst in favor of Ukraine, and then return them to German ownership. This way, “Russian” apartments – and there are at least 66 of them here – would enter the tense metropolitan housing market.
With my initiative, I would like to show that Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine should have specific negative consequences for the aggressor. (…) The confiscation of these assets as part of sanctions against Russia will create a precedent,” the politician said in an interview with n-tv.
Not far from the “ghost houses” in 1945, Nazi Germany signed an act of surrender. The building containing the “Surrender Hall”, now part of the Karlshorst Museum, became the headquarters of the Soviet military administration, and German residents were forced to vacate numerous surrounding houses within 24 hours. In 1994, the Soviet army finally left Germany; all but three houses were returned to the Germans. And no one knows why this is so, not even the scientific staff of the Berlin Museum Karlshorst.
Usek appealed to the Senate, but they only shrugged their shoulders, saying that there were no legal means for confiscating houses. In 2020, the then chief of staff of the Senate, Christian Gebler, sent a letter to the Russian Embassy in which he expressed Berlin’s interest in acquiring abandoned real estate. Moscow did not respond.
Having failed at the Berlin level, Usik tried to go to the Bundestag and the European Parliament. The deputies she contacted were also unable to help.
However, if the official Russian authorities remain silent about the fate of their real estate, Russian propaganda reacted violently to the initiative of the Berlin deputy. After reporting in Bild about Usik’s initiative, Russian media blasted it, distorting the facts. Therefore, politics received many “unpleasant” messages from Russian sympathizers.
Greens in Lichtenberg County also suggested looking into whether ghost houses could be bought or made suitable for use. In addition, immediately after the full-scale invasion, a fraudulent dentist tried to make money from them. A man approached a real estate agent with false title deeds and offered three houses for sale.
At the same time, British artist Jeremy Knowles launched a creative project together with two other colleagues from the USA and Russia – “And Let No One Be Forgotten”. The artists set up a “Solidarity Kiosk”, interviewed local residents and invited historians from the museums of Lichtenberg and Karlshorst to talk.
The artists explored the questions that leave empires after their fall. Local residents shared memories, anecdotes, emotions and photographs associated with the “ghost houses”.
But for now, this real estate remains in the hands of Russia – and without appropriate decisions at the federal level or at the EU level, this will remain so. There are 80 similar “Russian” apartments in Sühlke, an elite area of Cologne. And so far the city has no opportunity to buy or confiscate them from Russia.
Source: Racurs
I am David Wyatt, a professional writer and journalist for Buna Times. I specialize in the world section of news coverage, where I bring to light stories and issues that affect us globally. As a graduate of Journalism, I have always had the passion to spread knowledge through writing.