Russia detains Japanese journalist on suspicion of spying

Russia’s FSB security agency said on Tuesday it had detained a Japanese journalist for alleged espionage, and Moscow’s foreign ministry said it regretted that Tokyo was using correspondents to carry out spying.

In a statement on its website, the FSB said the Hokkaido Shimbun newspaper journalist was detained in the far eastern Sakhalin region on the day before he planned to leave Russia. It did not specify when this was.

Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova in a statement identified the journalist as Imai Yuki, according to the Russian transliteration of his name, and said his detention cast a new pall on relations with Tokyo.

Japan’s embassy in Moscow did not answer phone calls outside of business hours.

In a Russian state TV video report on the case, three masked men in black uniforms handcuffed a man lying on the ground as a voice off camera said he was suspected of spying.

The video showed the man being accompanied by two FSB servicemen onto a plane, then in a cage in a Moscow court, which ordered him detained for nearly two months.

The agency “thwarted the illegal activity” of the journalist, the FSB said.

“As a result of intelligence operations, it was established that he gathered and stored information related to the country’s defence capabilities in order to pass it on for national intelligence purposes to be used against the security of the Russian Federation,” the statement said.

The foreign ministry spokeswoman said, “Tokyo’s attempts to use its correspondents in Russia with the status of foreign journalists to gather information for undermining our state’s security are regrettable.”

Japan, she said, had adopted an anti-Russian position during Russia’s military campaign in Ukraine and refused to consider Moscow’s concerns about Tokyo’s “remilitarisation”.

“We have to note that what has occurred will become an additional factor clouding the atmosphere of Russian-Japanese relations,” Zakharova said.

Russia regards Japan as an “unfriendly” country because it has joined Western sanctions against Moscow over the war in Ukraine.

Russia and Japan, which never signed a formal World War Two peace treaty, have a territorial dispute over the Kuril Islands, known in Japan as the Northern Territories.

Russian president Vladimir Putin visited one of the disputed islands in August, causing an uproar in Japan. Tokyo has said it would continue implementing sanctions against Russia and supporting Ukraine.

One of the most prominent cases of a foreign journalist arrested in Russia was the detention of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich in 2023.

He was found guilty of espionage by a Russian court, sentenced to 16 years and then freed in an East-West prisoner swap in August 2024.

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