Russia has detained a Japanese journalist for suspected espionage, the country’s main security agency said on Tuesday, alleging that the journalist had been collecting intelligence on the country’s military capabilities.
The agency, the Federal Security Service, said in a statement that the journalist, working for the Japanese newspaper Hokkaido Shimbun, was arrested in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, on the Pacific island of Sakhalin in Russia’s far east. It said the journalist, whom it did not name, had been transported to Moscow, where he was remanded into pretrial custody by the Lefortovo District Court.
“As a result of operational investigative measures, it was established that he was collecting and storing information related to the country’s defense capability, with the aim of transmitting it on instructions from national intelligence for use against the security of the Russian Federation,” the statement said.
The journalist was collecting data on the number of local recruits taking part in the war in Ukraine, the F.S.B. told the Russian news agency Tass.
The Japanese Embassy in Moscow and the country’s consulate in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk did not respond to a request for comment.
Maria Zakharova, a spokesperson for the Russian Foreign Ministry, identified the detained journalist as Yuki Imai.
“This incident will be an additional factor that darkens the atmosphere of Russian-Japanese relations,” Ms. Zakharova said in a statement.
Russian state-run television and news agencies broadcast a video of the journalist’s detention in what appeared to be a hotel room. The video showed papers marked “for internal use only.” With his face blurred, the journalist was shown being escorted to an airplane and then to a court building in Moscow. The video also showed a search being conducted in the newspaper’s bureau in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry lists only one journalist accredited by the Hokkaido Shimbun newspaper, which is based on Hokkaido, a Japanese island just south of Sakhalin.
Russia has been engaged in a long-running territorial dispute with Japan over the Kuril Islands, which are controlled by Moscow but claimed by Tokyo as Japanese territory. Russia administers the Kurils from Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, as part of the Sakhalin region, but Japan, which calls them the Northern Territories, regards them as part of the Hokkaido prefecture.
The dispute intensified in August after President Vladimir V. Putin made his first ever visit to one of the islands, which was condemned by Japan.
The relationship between Russia and Japan was further challenged after Tokyo publicly said in July that Japan needed to improve its counterintelligence capacity. The announcement followed a report by The New York Times that revealed that Russian spies had been able to freely operate in the country, gathering intelligence and exporting goods that Moscow needs to prosecute its war in Ukraine.
At the beginning of October, speaking about the state of relations between the two countries Mr. Putin said that Russia was “interested in cooperation with Japan,” but he added that Moscow had been “concerned by Japan’s plans for militarization.”
In September, Mr. Putin said that “everything that is happening now, the deterioration in our relationship, is entirely down to the Japanese government.”
This is not the first time the F.S.B. has arrested a Japanese journalist on espionage accusations. In 2019, a Japanese journalist was detained in Vladivostok, a city in the far east of Russia, and accused of collecting classified information about the Russian military. At the time, no charges were pressed, and the journalist, who was not identified, was given three days to leave the country, Russian state news agencies reported.
In March 2023, a Wall Street Journal reporter, Evan Gershkovich, was arrested in the city of Yekaterinburg and accused of spying for America, which he and The Journal denied. He was sentenced to 16 years in prison before being released in August 2024 as part of the largest prisoner swap since the fall of the Soviet Union.
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