Japanese Foreign Ministry officials were in Moscow this week in an attempt to contact a journalist arrested in Russia's far east on allegations of spying. Journalist Yuki Imai was arrested on October 14 by Russia's FSB security service in the city of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk on Sakhalin Island. Televised footage of the arrest showed FSB officers barging into his hotel room as he slept.
The correspondent for the Hokkaido Shimbun newspaper was accused of attempting to obtain information on soldiers in the region, which is near the Kiril islands, a geopolitical sore spot in Russia-Japan relations. Russian authorities quickly transferred him to Lefortovo Prison in Moscow, where a court ordered him to be held in pretrial detention until at least December 12. If convicted, 34-year-old Imai faces up to 20 years in jail, according to the International Federation of Journalists, which has called for his immediate release.
Officials from the Japanese embassy in Moscow have been denied access to Imai. Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi has condemned the arrest and dismissed the claim that Imai was a spy. Russian Ambassador Nikolay Nozdrev said Imai had been caught "red-handed," the official TASS news agency reported.
Nozdrev has claimed that Japanese intelligence agencies use journalists to collect classified information with the goal of "undermining Russia's security and defense capability." Yoji Gomi, a veteran journalist and author who has reported from across Asia, told DW that Japanese journalists may occasionally meet with diplomats in the course of their work and "share thoughts and impressions." However, he rejects the idea that reporters are paid spies. "One-party nations often see foreign correspondents as spies because that is exactly what they use their journalists for," he said. "I can completely see how the Russians decided that Imai was a spy, as it is how they operate, plus he was in a sensitive part of Russia where there are lots of North Korean laborers that they want to keep quiet," Gomi added.
To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video Stephen Nagy, a professor of international relations at Tokyo's International Christian University, told DW that Russia might see Imai as a bargaining chip it can use to exchange for nationals detained overseas. Nagy doubts that Japan will give in to pressure. "They are going to resist because it means that Russia, or any other country, can then just seize a Japanese national, put them on trial for espionage and demand the release of one of their people," he said.
"It would set a dangerous precedent," he added. The arrest comes after a member of the Russia-linked hacking group Qilin was arrested in Japan and extradited to Germany to face charges in connection with a 2024 cyberattack on a logistics center. The last time a journalist was arrested in Russia was in 2019 for "attempting to obtain classified information about Russia's military potential in the Far East," Russia's Interfax news agency reported.
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