Russia has arrested a Japanese journalist from Sakhalin Island after accusing him of spying and gathering information on its defence capabilities. On Tuesday, Russian news agencies reported that the reporter, working for the Hokkaido Shimbun newspaper, was arrested by the Federal Security Service (FSB) as he was preparing to leave the next day. According to the TASS news agency, the FSB said the journalist, Imai Yuki, was arrested in the Sakhalin region and taken to Moscow after being accused in a “criminal case”.
The arrest of the Japanese citizen comes amid deteriorating relations between the two countries as Tokyo joined Western sanctions against Moscow due to the invasion of Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s August visit to Iturup Island, which is part of the Kuril Islands archipelago, drew sharp reactions from Japan. The two countries have a longstanding territorial dispute over the Kuril Islands dating back more than a century.
Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Maria Zakharova, during a press briefing on Tuesday, said Yuki was accused of espionage. We cannot help but point out that today’s incident is not an isolated one,” Zakharova said. According to Russia’s Interfax news agency, Yuki will be remanded until December 12 before the trial begins.
On Wednesday morning, Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi said Tokyo had requested the “prompt provision of information” from Russian authorities over the arrest. Japanese media have also reported that the country’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs would summon the Russian ambassador Nikolay Nozdrev to lodge a protest over the arrest, but no official confirmation has been released so far. The Hokkaido Shimbun, where Yuki worked, said it was still confirming details and added that it would “respond with the reporter’s safety as our top priority”.
While Russia administers the Kuril Islands archipelago, Japan claims the four southernmost islands – Iturup, Kunashir, Shikotan and the Habomai islets – calling them the Northern Territories. The Kuril chain of islands sits between Hokkaido in northern Japan and Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula. The dispute began in 1855, after Russia and Japan established their first diplomatic and trade treaty, which also drew the Russo-Japanese border in the Kuril Islands, with Iturup under Japanese control and the islands to the north under Russian control.
Russia took control of the Kuril Islands after the 1945 Yalta agreement, which was signed by United States President Franklin Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. Following Japan’s surrender in the final weeks of World War II, Moscow seized the entire archipelago and expelled about 17,000 Japanese citizens. In the 1951 San Francisco peace treaty, Japan renounced the Kurils but maintained that the four southernmost islands were part of its territory.
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