The key facts

  • Yuki Imai, 34, correspondent for Hokkaido Shimbun, was detained by the FSB on October 14 in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk on charges of attempting to obtain information about military personnel
  • A court in Moscow ordered detention until December 12; according to the International Federation of Journalists, if convicted he faces up to 20 years
  • Japanese diplomats were denied access to the detainee; Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi rejected the accusations, and the Russian ambassador said Imai was caught 'red-handed'

Detention on Sakhalin and transfer to Moscow

Japanese Foreign Ministry officials were in Moscow this week trying to gain access to a journalist detained in the Russian Far East on espionage charges. Hokkaido Shimbun correspondent Yuki Imai was detained on October 14 by FSB officers in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk on Sakhalin. A video of the detention shown on television captured FSB officers bursting into his hotel room while he was sleeping. The correspondent was accused of attempting to obtain information about military personnel in the region located near the Kuril Islands — a long-standing point of dispute in relations between the two countries. Russian authorities quickly transferred him to the Lefortovo pre-trial detention center in Moscow, where a court ordered him held in custody at least until December 12.

Charges and reactions from both sides

According to the International Federation of Journalists, 34-year-old Imai, if convicted, could face up to 20 years in prison; the organization demanded his immediate release. Japanese diplomats in Moscow were denied access to the detainee. Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi condemned the arrest and rejected the claim that Imai is a spy. Russian Ambassador Nikolai Nozdryov, according to the TASS agency, said Imai was caught 'red-handed' and claims that Japanese intelligence services use journalists to gather secret information in order to 'undermine Russia's security and defense capability.'

Expert opinions

Veteran journalist Yoji Gomi commented to DW that Japanese journalists sometimes meet with diplomats as part of their work and 'share thoughts and impressions,' but rejected the idea that reporters are paid spies. 'One-party states often consider foreign correspondents to be spies because that is exactly how they themselves use their own journalists,' he said. According to him, it is possible to understand why Russians decided Imai was a spy, especially since he was in a sensitive region where there are many North Korean workers, a topic that is preferred not to be discussed there. Steven Nagy, professor of international relations at the Tokyo International Christian University, suggested that Moscow may view Imai as a bargaining chip for an exchange for Russians detained abroad. However, in his view, Japan will not yield to pressure, as this would set a dangerous precedent: any country could detain Japanese citizens, accuse them of espionage, and demand the release of its own citizens.

Context of previous detentions

The arrest occurred after a member of the Russia-linked hacker group Qilin was detained in Japan and extradited to Germany to face charges related to a 2024 cyberattack on a logistics center. According to the Interfax agency, the previous case of a journalist's arrest in Russia occurred in 2019 — for 'attempting to obtain secret information about Russia's military potential in the Far East,' but the journalist was quickly released then. Imai's case is probably the most serious since 2023, when Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich was detained, sentenced to 16 years in a penal colony, and released in 2024 as part of a prisoner exchange between Russia and Western countries.

Cooling of bilateral relations

Imai's detention became another episode in a series of incidents that sharply worsened bilateral relations. Nagy believes the detention is aimed at pressuring Tokyo and is part of a coordinated approach with China to isolate Japan at a time when the US is preoccupied with domestic problems and the conflict in the Middle East. According to him, Moscow and Beijing seek to create an image of Japan not as a reformed member of the international community but as a 'military state of the 1930s' posing a threat to stability in the Indo-Pacific region, in order to discredit Tokyo's diplomatic efforts. Tadashi Anno, professor of politics at Sophia University in Tokyo, believes that Japan made efforts to maintain stable relations with Moscow even after joining the international condemnation of the invasion of Ukraine, and calls the current escalation by Russia puzzling in its timing: 'Japan condemned the invasion in 2022 as a fundamental violation of international law, but Russia is only now responding harshly.'

Territorial dispute as the backdrop of the conflict

At the center of the deterioration of relations is the territorial dispute over a chain of islands off the northern tip of Japan, seized by Soviet troops after Japan's capitulation in World War II. In Japan they are called the Northern Territories, in Russia — the Southern Kurils; previously Tokyo hoped that diplomatic efforts would convince Russia to return them under Japanese sovereignty. This line has stalled in recent years and received a new blow when Japan announced in the spring its accession to the NATO initiative to provide non-lethal aid to Kyiv. In August, President Vladimir Putin visited the disputed islands — only the second Russian leader to do so. Earlier this month, a delegation of Chinese entrepreneurs was received on one of the islands; negotiations on possible economic cooperation are underway.