Moscow has declared 40 German diplomats "undesirable persons" in Russia and ordered their expulsion.
The German ambassador in Moscow received a letter of protest against Berlin's unfriendly policy and against the expulsion of 40 Russian diplomats at the beginning of April, the Foreign Ministry in Moscow announced.
According to information from the German Press Agency, the number corresponds to about a third of the German diplomatic corps in Russia.
The reaction had been expected from the German side for weeks.
Berlin had previously declared 40 Russian diplomats who are said to have acted as spies in Germany to be "undesirable persons".
This means that those affected and their families have to leave their host country.
About 100 Germans affected in total
In Russia, far more than 100 Germans are likely to be affected by the ministry's decision, because the diplomats' relatives will also have to leave the country.
It is expected that the services of the German representations, including consulates outside the capital Moscow, will have to be significantly restricted.
The German embassy is the largest among the representations of the EU states in Moscow.
According to a statement by the Russian Foreign Ministry, the German Ambassador Géza Andreas von Geyr was also handed a firm protest against the statements made by Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock.
Baerbock (Greens) decided at the beginning of April to “declare a significant number of members of the Russian embassy to be undesirable people who have worked here in Germany every day against our freedom, against the cohesion of our society”.
The work of the affected Russian diplomats "is a threat to those who seek protection from us," Baerbock said in justification for the expulsion.
The spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, then announced: "We will also respond to this malicious act by the German political machine." Time and again, Russia reacts in such cases by expelling a similar number of diplomats.
In the past few weeks, Russia has already expelled dozens of diplomats from European countries.
Germany had expelled the Russian diplomats after hundreds of bodies were found in Ukraine after Russian troops withdrew from the Kiev suburb of Bucha.
Baerbock said of the atrocities that these images "testify to the incredible brutality of the Russian leadership" and those who followed their propaganda, "of a will to annihilate that transcends all borders".
The federal government had recently expelled Russian diplomats several times.
In December, as a consequence of a Berlin murder conviction against a Russian, she declared two employees of the Russian embassy to be "undesirable persons".