Russia arrests Japanese journalist on Sakhalin for spying

Images

×

Japanese journalist arrested in Russia's Sakhalin region on spying charges independent.co.uk

Russia's FSB said Tuesday it arrested a Japanese journalist on Sakhalin Island on suspicion of espionage, flying him to Moscow where a court ordered him held for two months pending investigation. The man, identified only as an employee of the Hokkaido Shimbun newspaper, was detained as he prepared to leave Russia. The security service, the main successor to the Soviet KGB, released a video of masked agents in black escorting the suspect from a hotel room to a plane, then showed him facing a judge at the Lefortovo District Court.

The arrest follows a sharp deterioration in relations between Moscow and Tokyo. Vladimir Putin visited the Kuril Islands in August — his first trip to the disputed Pacific chain, which the Soviet Union took from Japan in the final days of the Second World War and which has kept the two countries from ever signing a formal peace treaty. Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi called the visit "absolutely unacceptable" and "incompatible with the Japanese position on the Northern Territories," as Japan calls the four southernmost islands. Moscow responded by summoning the Japanese ambassador and declaring Russia's sovereignty over the southern Kurils "absolutely unshakable."

The FSB said the journalist was suspected of gathering information on Russia's defense capabilities on behalf of a Japanese intelligence agency — a charge levelled without published evidence, as is standard in such cases. The pattern is familiar. In recent years Russia has arrested a series of foreigners, mainly Americans, on criminal charges and then released them in prisoner swaps with the West. The largest such exchange since the Cold War came in August 2024, when Moscow freed Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, Radio Free Europe editor Alsu Kurmasheva and others in a multinational deal that set two dozen people free. Japan, however, holds few Russian prisoners and has little to trade. Sakhalin sits just off the Hokkaido Shimbun's home island of Hokkaido — the arrest was announced without naming the suspect, and the two-month custody order came before his newspaper could say goodbye.