Japan-Russia ties erode as journalist sits in Moscow jail

Japanese Foreign Ministry officials were in Moscow this week in an attempt to contact a journalist arrested in Russia's far east on spying claims.

Journalist Yuki Imai was arrested on October 14 by Russia's FSB security service in the city of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk on Sakhalin Island. Televised footage of the arrest showed FSB officers barging into his hotel room as he slept.

The correspondent for the Hokkaido Shimbun newspaper was accused of attempting to obtain information on soldiers in the region, which is near the Kiril islands, a geopolitical sore spot in Russia-Japan relations.

Russian authorities quickly transferred him to Lefortovo Prison in Moscow, where a court ordered him to be held in pre-trial detention until at least December 12. If convicted, 34-year-old Imai faces up to 20 years in jail, according to the International Federation of Journalists, which has called for his immediate release.

Officials of the Japanese embassy in Moscow have been refused access to Imai. In Tokyo, Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi has condemned the arrest and dismissed the claim that Imai was a spy.

Russian Ambassador Nikolay Nozdrev said Imai had been caught "red-handed," Russia's TASS news agency reported. He has claimed that Japanese intelligence agencies use Japanese journalists to collect classified information with the goal of "undermining Russia's security and defense capability."

Russia accuses journalists of being 'spies'

Yoji Gomi, a veteran journalist and author who has reported from across Asia, told DW Japanese journalists may occasionally meet with diplomats in the course of their work and "share thoughts and impressions." However, he rejects the idea that reporters are paid spies.

"One-party nations often see foreign correspondents as spies because that is exactly what they use their journalists for," he said.

"I can completely see how the Russians decided that Imai was a spy, as it is how they operate, plus he was in a sensitive part of Russia where there are lots of North Korean laborers that they want to keep quiet," Gomi added.

Stephen Nagy, a professor of international relations at Tokyo's International Christian University, said that Russia may see Imai as a bargaining chip it can use to exchange for its nationals detained overseas.

However, Nagy doubts Japan will give in to pressure.

"They are going to resist because it means that Russia, or any other country, can then just seize a Japanese national, put them on trial for espionage and demand the release of one of their people," he told DW.

"It would set a dangerous precedent," he added. 

The arrest comes after a member of a Russia-linked hacking group "Qilin" was arrested in Japan and extradited to Germany to face charges in connection with a 2024 cyberattack on a logistics center. 

The last time a journalist was arrested in Russia was in 2019 for "attempting to obtain classified information about Russia's military potential in the Far East," Russia's Interfax news agency reported. However, in this case, the journalist was quickly released. 

Imai's case is perhaps the most serious since 2023, when Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich was arrested in Russia and sentenced to 16 years in a penal colony before being released in a prisoner exchange with Western countries in 2024.

Strained Japan-Russia ties

Imai's arrest is the latest in a series of incidents that have sent bilateral relations into a tailspin.

Nagy said Imai's seizure is designed to put pressure on Tokyo. He added this is part of a coordinated approach with China to isolate Japan at a time when the US is preoccupied with domestic issues and the conflict in the Middle East.

"Moscow and Beijing are coordinating to create the image that Japan is not a reformed member of the international community but still the military state of the 1930s and that it poses a threat to stability in the Indo-Pacific region,"  Nagy said.

"This is all designed to smear Japan's efforts to lead diplomacy in the region at a time when the US is perhaps distracted," he told DW. "And it does not even matter much that it is not true; they will just continue to repeat the claim to discredit and weaken Tokyo."

Decades-long row over disputed islands 

Tadashi Anno, a professor of politics at Tokyo's Sophia University, believes Japan had been working hard to maintain a stable relationship with Moscow, even after Tokyo joined international condemnation of the invasion of Ukraine.

Anno said Moscow's timing on turning up the heat on Tokyo is puzzling.

"Japan condemned the invasion of Ukraine in 2022 because it was a fundamental violation of international law, but Russia is only now pushing back hard," he told DW.

At the center of deteriorating ties is a territorial dispute about a chain of islands off the far north of Japan that were seized by Soviet forces after Japan's surrender in World War II.

Known as the Northern Territories in Japan and the Southern Kurils by Russia, there have been hopes in the past in Tokyo that a concerted diplomatic effort could be sufficient to convince Russia to return them to Japanese sovereignty.

That campaign has faltered in the last couple of years, however, and was further dented when Japan announced in the spring that it would be joining the NATO initiative to provide non-lethal assistance to Kyiv.

In August, President Vladimir Putin visited the disputed islands, only the second Russian leader to do so. Earlier this month, a delegation of Chinese businesspeople was welcomed on one of the islands and talks are under way on the possibility of economic cooperation.

Edited by: Wesley Rahn