Russia detains Japanese journalist on spying charge

Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) announced on Tuesday, Oct. 13, that it had detained a Japanese journalist on Sakhalin, an island in Russia's Far East just north of Hokkaido. According to Al Jazeera, agents seized him in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk as he was about to leave the country. The FSB accuses him of gathering information on Russia's defense for Japanese intelligence, an offense punishable by up to 20 years in prison.

The FSB did not name him. Russia's Foreign Ministry and the Interfax news agency say he is Yuki Imai of the Hokkaido Shimbun, a newspaper based on Japan's northern island of Hokkaido, according to The Moscow Times. Once in Moscow, a court ordered him held for nearly two months.

The FSB released, through TASS, the Russian state news agency, a video in which masked agents handcuff him in a hotel room. The Ukrainian site Militarnyi attributes to the service a more specific claim: that he was collecting data on recruits from the Kuril Islands who are fighting in Ukraine. Neither accusation comes with public evidence.

Tokyo has not yet taken a position. An official at Japan's embassy in Moscow told the Kyodo news agency that the government is trying to verify the reports. The Hokkaido Shimbun told the NNN network it was confirming the details, according to Tokyo Reporter.

The case comes amid strained relations. Since Japan joined sanctions over Ukraine, Moscow has treated it as an "unfriendly" country, and the Kuril Islands, which Japan calls the Northern Territories, have blocked a peace treaty since 1945. Tensions rose in August, when Vladimir Putin visited one of the islands. In 2020 Russia already expelled a Kyodo reporter it accused of seeking military data, which the agency denied, according to Al Jazeera.

Still missing are an official response from the Japanese government, the newspaper's own confirmation of the name and the date of the Moscow hearing, which the sources do not give.