Staff from Japan’s foreign ministry spent this week in Moscow trying to reach Yuki Imai, a correspondent detained in Russia’s Far East on suspicion of espionage. The FSB, Russia’s security service, picked up Imai, 34, on October 14 in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, on Sakhalin Island. Broadcast images showed agents entering his hotel room while he was asleep. Investigators say the Hokkaido Shimbun reporter tried to gather material about military personnel near the Kuril Islands, a longstanding flashpoint between Moscow and Tokyo. Authorities quickly moved him to Lefortovo Prison in Moscow, and a court set pretrial custody through at least December 12. The International Federation of Journalists says conviction could bring up to 20 years and has urged his release.
- Key Point: Imai, a Hokkaido Shimbun correspondent, was detained by the FSB on Sakhalin and moved to Lefortovo Prison; pretrial custody runs through at least Dec. 12.
- Key Point: Japanese embassy officials have not seen him. Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi criticized the arrest and rejected the espionage claim.
- Key Point: Ambassador Nikolay Nozdrev said Imai was caught in the act and alleged Japanese intelligence uses journalists to gather classified material.
- Key Point: Analysts link the case to the disputed Kuril Islands and to what they call a Russian-Chinese effort to pressure Tokyo.
Arrest footage, consular access and official accounts
Broadcast footage showed security officers entering Imai’s room while he slept. The FSB claims he sought information about soldiers near the Kuril chain, an area that has long complicated Russia-Japan relations. Japanese embassy officials in Moscow have not been allowed to see him. Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi criticized the detention and rejected the allegation that he is a spy.
Ambassador Nikolay Nozdrev gave a different account. TASS quoted him as saying Imai had been caught
red-handed.
Nozdrev asserts that Japanese intelligence agencies use reporters to collect classified material with the aim of
undermining Russia’s security and defense capability.
Yoji Gomi, a veteran correspondent and author who has reported across Asia, told DW that Japanese reporters sometimes meet diplomats and
share thoughts and impressions.
He dismissed the notion that they are paid operatives.
One-party nations often see foreign correspondents as spies because that is exactly what they use their journalists for,
he said.
Gomi added that the many North Korean laborers there, whom Moscow wants kept quiet, would have raised suspicions.
I can completely see how the Russians decided that Imai was a spy, as it is how they operate, plus he was in a sensitive part of Russia where there are lots of North Korean laborers that they want to keep quiet.
A bargaining chip, precedents and coordinated pressure
Stephen Nagy, who teaches international relations at International Christian University in Tokyo, told DW that Moscow could treat Imai as a bargaining chip for Russians held in other countries. He doubts Tokyo will yield.
They are going to resist because it means that Russia, or any other country, can then just seize a Japanese national, put them on trial for espionage and demand the release of one of their people,
he said.
It would set a dangerous precedent,
he added.
The case follows Japan’s arrest of a suspected Qilin member, a Russia-linked hacking group; he was extradited to Germany over a 2024 logistics-center attack. Interfax said the last journalist held in Russia, in 2019, was accused of seeking classified material on Far East military capabilities and freed quickly. Imai’s case may be the gravest since Evan Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal reporter, was detained in Russia in 2023, handed a 16-year penal-colony term and freed in 2024 in a swap with Western governments. Moscow has held foreign reporters for swaps before.
Nagy described the detention as a lever aimed at Tokyo and part of coordinated pressure with Beijing to isolate Japan while Washington is absorbed by domestic politics and the Middle East.
Moscow and Beijing are coordinating to create the image that Japan is not a reformed member of the international community but still the military state of the 1930s and that it poses a threat to stability in the Indo-Pacific region,
he said.
This is all designed to smear Japan’s efforts to lead diplomacy in the region at a time when the US is perhaps distracted,
he said.
And it does not even matter much that it is not true; they will just continue to repeat the claim to discredit and weaken Tokyo.
Disputed islands and a widening rift
Tadashi Anno, a politics professor at Sophia University in Tokyo, told DW that Japan had worked hard to keep ties with Russia stable despite joining global criticism of the Ukraine invasion. He called Moscow’s timing puzzling.
Japan condemned the invasion of Ukraine in 2022 because it was a fundamental violation of international law, but Russia is only now pushing back hard,
he said.
The friction centers on an island chain north of Japan that Soviet troops seized after Japan’s World War II surrender. Tokyo once hoped persistent diplomacy could persuade Moscow to return the islands, which Japan calls the Northern Territories and Russia calls the Southern Kurils. That effort weakened over two years and suffered another setback this spring, when Tokyo said it would join a NATO program sending nonlethal aid to Kyiv.
In August, President Vladimir Putin traveled to the contested islands, becoming just the second Russian leader ever to visit. Earlier this month, Chinese business representatives visited one island, with talks under way on possible economic cooperation.
The immediate issues are consular access and any extension past December 12. Politically, the case is likely to make Tokyo warier of Moscow and give Moscow and Beijing another lever against Japan.
Edited by Wesley Rahn.