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.
Russia and Japan, which never signed a formal World War Two peace treaty, have seen their diplomatic relations deteriorate since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, though Japan relies on Russia for supplies of liquefied natural gas (LNG).
In a statement, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova 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.
by CNN – Russia detains Japanese journalist on suspicion of spying
