On Monday, Russian officials announced that they had expelled a Japanese journalist, allegedly an employee of Kyodo News, on accusations of attempted espionage. State-run RIA news agency reported that the unnamed journalist was trying to obtain classified information regarding military capabilities in the Russian Far East.
Kyodo has not identified the reporter but confirmed that he was detained on 25 December in Vladivostok and was released after almost five hours of questioning. In an email statement, Kyodo said that the accused left the country the next day for security reasons, and insisted that he was only engaged in “standard reporting activities”.
The Russian foreign ministry summoned the Japanese mission to make an official diplomatic protest about the incident. The Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs has refused to comment on the matter.
This news comes a few days after Japanese authorities arrested 48-year-old Yutaka Araki, a former SoftBank Corp. employee, on Saturday on the charge of spying on, and sharing proprietary information from, the telecom carrier to officials in Russia’s Tokyo trade representative office.
In response to this, the Russian embassy in Tokyo put out a statement on Facebook stating that Russia “regrets [that] Japan has joined anti-Russian speculation trendy in the West on the hackneyed topic of spy mania.”
This espionage row is the latest development in a decades-long territorial dispute between Moscow and Tokyo over a chain of islands in the Pacific, known as the Southern Kuriles in Russia and the Northern Territories in Japan. This clash has prevented the two countries from developing their relations and signing a formal peace treaty thus far.
Image Source: Arab News