Japanese Reporter's Detention in Russia Highlights Sharp Decline in Bilateral Relations

Japanese Foreign Ministry officials traveled to Moscow this week to try to reach a journalist detained in Russia on suspicion of espionage. The case has added to a run of incidents that have pushed relations between the two countries to a low point.

Yuki Imai, a 34-year-old correspondent for the Hokkaido Shimbun newspaper, was arrested on October 14 by Russia's FSB security service in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, on Sakhalin Island in the country's far east. Televised footage showed FSB officers entering his hotel room while he slept. He is accused of trying to gather information about soldiers in the region, which lies near the Kuril islands, a long-standing source of friction between Moscow and Tokyo.

Imai was swiftly moved to Lefortovo Prison in Moscow, where a court ordered pretrial detention until at least December 12. According to the International Federation of Journalists, which has demanded his immediate release, he could face up to 20 years in prison if convicted. Staff from the Japanese embassy in Moscow have been refused access to him. Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi has condemned the arrest and rejected the claim that Imai is a spy.

Russian Ambassador Nikolay Nozdrev said Imai was caught "red-handed," according to the state news agency TASS. He also alleged that Japanese intelligence services use journalists to collect classified material in order to undermine Russia's security and defense capability.

Yoji Gomi, a veteran journalist and author who has reported across Asia, told DW that Japanese reporters may sometimes meet diplomats and exchange impressions, but he rejected the idea that they are paid spies. In his view, one-party states often treat foreign correspondents as spies because that is how they use their own journalists. Stephen Nagy, a professor of international relations at Tokyo's International Christian University, suggested Moscow may see Imai as a bargaining chip to swap for Russians held abroad. He doubts Tokyo will yield, warning that doing so would set a dangerous precedent.

The arrest follows the detention in Japan of a member of the Russia-linked hacking group Qilin, who was extradited to Germany over a 2024 cyberattack on a logistics center. Russia last arrested a journalist on similar grounds in 2019, but that person was released quickly. Imai's case may be the most serious since Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich was arrested in 2023 and sentenced to 16 years, before being freed in a 2024 prisoner exchange with Western countries.

Nagy argued that the move is meant to pressure Tokyo and forms part of a coordinated approach with China to isolate Japan while the United States is occupied with domestic matters and the conflict in the Middle East. He said Moscow and Beijing want to portray Japan as still being the military state of the 1930s and a threat to Indo-Pacific stability, whether or not that is true.

Tadashi Anno, a politics professor at Sophia University in Tokyo, said Japan had worked hard to keep relations with Russia stable even after it joined international condemnation of the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. He found the timing of Russia's tougher stance puzzling, since it is only now pushing back strongly.

At the heart of the deterioration is a dispute over islands off Japan's far north, seized by Soviet forces after Japan's surrender in World War II. Japan calls them the Northern Territories, while Russia calls them the Southern Kurils. Tokyo's hopes of winning their return through diplomacy have faded in recent years, and were hurt further when Japan said in the spring it would join the NATO initiative providing nonlethal aid to Kyiv. In August, President Vladimir Putin visited the islands, only the second Russian leader to do so, and earlier this month a delegation of Chinese businesspeople was welcomed on one of them, with talks under way on possible economic cooperation.