Russia has detained a Japanese journalist on suspicion of espionage, accusing the reporter of gathering information on the country’s defense capabilities.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova identified the reporter as Yuki Imai, from the Hokkaido Shimbun newspaper.
The detention comes as relations between the two countries have sharply deteriorated over the war in Ukraine and the territorial dispute over the Kuril Islands.
The FSB, Russia’s domestic intelligence service, released a video of the arrest in what appears to be a hotel room and said that he had been preparing to return to Japan when he was detained.
The clip shows the detainee, his face blurred, lying face down on the floor as masked officers handcuff him. It then cuts to officers sifting through his bags while he unlocks his devices, and later shows him being escorted to an airplane and then to a courthouse in Moscow.
In her statement, Zakharova noted “the overall deterioration of bilateral cooperation driven by the Japanese authorities’ anti-Russian stance” since the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine and “Tokyo’s refusal to heed Moscow’s concerns regarding Japan’s remilitarization.”
“We are compelled to note that this incident will further cloud the atmosphere of Russian-Japanese relations,” she said.
The FSB accused the reporter of collecting data on Kuril Islands residents who volunteered or were mobilized for the war in Ukraine.
“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 FSB said in a statement.
Espionage carries a sentence of up to 20 years in prison under Russian law.
In a statement, the Hokkaido Shimbun said it was aware of the FSB announcement of “the detention of one of our male reporters on suspicion of espionage, but we are still confirming the details. We are giving top priority to ensuring the reporter’s safety.”
Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Minoru Kihara said at a news conference on Wednesday that Japanese authorities have still not been able to contact the detained journalist.
“We are working to confirm the facts, including by requesting the Russian authorities to provide information promptly,” he said. “We have also made representations to the Russian side, calling for humanitarian consideration and fair and impartial treatment.”
Russia and Japan have also long been locked in a territorial dispute over the four southernmost islands in the Kuril chain, known as the Southern Kurils in Russia and the Northern Territories in Japan.
The islands were seized by the Soviet Union toward the end of World War II and have been controlled by Moscow ever since, though Tokyo still claims them as Japanese territory. They offer rich fishing grounds, mineral resources and year-round ice-free straits that give Russia’s Pacific fleet access to the ocean from Vladivostok.
Russian President Vladimir Putin visited the islands for the first time this summer, touring a naval base and boarding a guided-missile cruiser in a show of force meant to project power in the region and reassert Moscow’s claims, which reignited the old dispute. Japanese officials called the visit “absolutely unacceptable.”
Russian authorities have a track record of using detained foreigners as bargaining chips, swapping them for Russians held or convicted abroad.
The last non-Russian reporter arrested in Russia was Wall Street Journal correspondent Evan Gershkovich, detained in Yekaterinburg in March 2023 and accused of spying for the United States, a charge both he and the Journal denied.
He was sentenced to 16 years in prison but was freed in August 2024 as part of the largest prisoner swap since the fall of the Soviet Union, which also secured the release of more than a dozen political prisoners. In return, the U.S. released two hackers and a suspected intelligence officer, while Germany freed Vadim Krasikov, a Russian assassin serving a life sentence for the 2019 murder of a Chechen dissident in a Berlin park.
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