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Russia has arrested a Japanese journalist on espionage charges, accusing him of collecting information related to Russian defence for Japan.
BBC reported on Wednesday (October 14) that the journalist, Yuki Imai of Hokkaido Shimbun, was detained in Russia’s Far Eastern Sakhalin region. He was scheduled to leave Russia the following day.
The arrest comes amid heightened tensions between the two countries following Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit to the disputed Kuril Islands in August. Both Russia and Japan claim sovereignty over the island chain.
The Japanese government has not commented in detail on the arrest. However, Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said on Tuesday that authorities were “verifying the facts” and would take “appropriate measures” after completing their assessment.
According to Russia’s state-run TASS news agency, Russian authorities alleged that Imai was acting “on instructions from Japan’s national intelligence agency”. He was also accused of gathering information about individuals involved in a special military operation in the Kuril Islands.
The Kuril Islands lie between Japan’s northern island of Hokkaido and Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula. The archipelago is under Russian administrative control, but Japan claims four southern islands, referring to them as its “Northern Territories”.
Interfax, another Russian news agency, reported that Imai had been transferred to Moscow and would remain in custody until December 12, pending trial. If convicted of espionage in Russia, he could face up to 20 years in prison.
In a statement on Tuesday, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Tokyo’s attempts to collect information through correspondents working under the status of foreign journalists in Russia, with the aim of undermining the country’s security, were regrettable.
“Today’s incident is not an isolated case,” she added, without naming any other journalists or media outlets allegedly involved in similar activities.
Imai’s published reports have covered Russia’s relations with North Korea and the lives of people in Sakhalin. Hokkaido Shimbun published a report on his detention but did not identify him by name. The newspaper has made no further comment on the incident.
Russia and Japan have been locked in a territorial dispute over the Kuril Islands for decades. The disagreement remains one of the main obstacles to a formal peace treaty between the two countries following World War II.
Takaichi criticised Putin’s visit to the islands in August, his first trip to the disputed territory. She said the visit had “hurt the feelings of the Japanese people” and was “inconsistent with Japan’s longstanding position” on the Northern Territories.
Moscow rejected her criticism as “politically inappropriate” and “legally unfounded”.
Despite years of efforts to resolve the dispute, little progress has been made. Relations have also remained strained since Japan imposed sanctions on Moscow following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Last week, Moscow further angered Tokyo by seeking the extradition of Japanese International Criminal Court (ICC) President Tomoko Akane.
Akane and several other ICC officials have been on Russia’s wanted list since 2023, after the court issued an arrest warrant for Putin over alleged war crimes in Ukraine.
In 2023, Russia detained Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, an American citizen, on espionage charges. He was later sentenced to 16 years in prison.
Gershkovich was released in 2024 as part of a prisoner exchange, one of the largest such swaps since the Cold War.
In 2019, Moscow also detained a Japanese journalist working for Kyodo News on suspicion of attempting to obtain military secrets. The journalist, who was arrested in Vladivostok, was ordered to leave Russia within 72 hours.
