Suspect was arrested on Russia’s far-eastern Sakhalin Island before being transferred to Moscow, says Russia’s FSB.
Russian authorities say they have arrested a Japanese journalist on the far eastern Sakhalin Island, accusing him of espionage.
The Federal Security Service (FSB) announced the arrest on Tuesday, saying the man was believed to have gathered information on Russia’s defence capabilities for Japanese intelligence. The charges carry up to 20 years in prison.
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Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs named the journalist as Imai Yuki, who it said worked for Japan’s Hokkaido Shimbun newspaper.
The Japanese government was trying to verify reports of the journalist’s detention, according to an official at Tokyo’s embassy in Moscow cited by Japan’s Kyodo news agency.
The journalist was arrested on Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, the main city on Sakhalin Island, as he was preparing to leave Russia, said the FSB. He was then flown to Moscow, where a court ordered him to be held behind bars pending the probe, the agency added.
A video shared by Russia’s TASS news agency, attributed to the FSB, shows masked officers appearing to handcuff the suspect in a hotel room, before transporting him to an interrogation room.
The suspect was then shown boarding a plane accompanied by two FSB servicemen, before appearing in a cage on trial in a Moscow court, which authorised his custody for nearly two months.
The Japanese man’s arrest comes amid a spike in tensions between Russia and Japan following Russian President Vladimir Putin’s trip in August to the Kuril Islands, the Moscow-controlled Pacific archipelago that is claimed by both countries.
The Sakhalin region includes Sakhalin Island and the four southernmost islands of the Kuril chain, which Japan calls the Northern Territories.
Russia and Japan never signed a formal World War II peace treaty, with the main obstacle being the unresolved territorial dispute over the Kuril Islands.
Authorities in Russia have arrested numerous foreigners for alleged espionage since it invaded neighbouring Ukraine in 2022.
One of the most prominent cases was the detention of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich in 2023. He was found guilty of espionage by a Russian court, sentenced to 16 years and then freed in a major prisoner swap involving Russia and Western countries in August 2024.