Russia Arrests Japanese Journalist on Spying Suspicion amid Kuril Islands Tension
Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) said on Tuesday that a Japanese journalist had been arrested in the country's Sakhalin region on suspicion of espionage, a case likely to add to already severe strains between Moscow and Tokyo.
In a statement, the FSB said the man, who worked for the Hokkaido Shimbun, a daily newspaper based in northern Japan, was suspected of gathering information about Russia's defence capabilities on behalf of a Japanese intelligence agency. The agency did not name him. It said he was detained as he was preparing to leave Russia and was flown to Moscow, where he was placed in custody.
The Lefortovo District Court in Moscow ordered that he be held for two months while the investigation continues. The security service released video said to show masked agents in black detaining the man in a hotel room, escorting him to an aircraft bound for Moscow and later standing before a judge. The footage could not be independently verified, and the FSB did not release further details of the allegations. Its statement made no mention of any response from the Japanese government or from the newspaper.
The arrest comes at a difficult moment in Russian-Japanese relations. President Vladimir Putin visited Iturup in August, his first trip to the Kuril Islands, a Pacific archipelago controlled by Moscow but also claimed by Japan.
The Sakhalin region administered by Russia includes Sakhalin Island and the four southernmost islands of the Kuril chain, which Japan calls the Northern Territories. The Soviet Union took the islands from Japan in the final days of the Second World War, and the unresolved dispute has prevented the two countries from signing a peace treaty that would formally end their wartime hostilities.
Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi described Putin's visit as “incompatible with the Japanese position on the Northern Territories” and “absolutely unacceptable”, calling it a further blow to ties already strained over the war in Ukraine. Moscow responded by summoning Japan's ambassador to protest what it called “anti-Russia” statements by Takaichi and other Japanese officials, stressing that “Russia's sovereignty and jurisdiction over the southern Kuril Islands are absolutely unshakable.”
Decades of diplomatic efforts to reach a settlement have produced no visible result, and Moscow has over the years strengthened its military presence on the islands, in moves that appeared to underline its firm position in the dispute.
Russian authorities have in recent years arrested a number of foreigners, mainly Americans, on various criminal charges and later released them in prisoner exchanges with the United States and other Western countries. The largest such exchange since the Cold War took place in August 2024, when Moscow freed journalists Evan Gershkovich and Alsu Kurmasheva, American Paul Whelan and Russian dissidents in a multinational deal that set two dozen people free.
Espionage cases in Russia are typically heard behind closed doors, and no date has been announced for any further court proceedings against the journalist.
