Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) recently detained a correspondent for the Japanese newspaper Hokkaido Shimbun on the island of Sakhalin. Officially, the journalist is suspected of spying for Japanese intelligence. He was taken to Moscow, where the Lefortovo District Court ordered him held in pretrial detention.
The journalist was accredited by Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and worked in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk. According to the FSB, he collected and stored information related to Russia’s defense capabilities for later transfer to a Japanese intelligence service. He was detained shortly before he was due to leave the country.
The FSB’s investigative department opened a criminal case under Article 276 of the Russian Criminal Code, which covers espionage. The charge carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.
The FSB did not identify the detained journalist, and footage from the courtroom broadcast on Russian television blurred out his face. However, the Telegram channel Ostorozhno, Novosti identified the reporter as 34-year-old correspondent Yuki Imai, who arrived in Russia this past summer.
According to the outlet, Imai visited Vladivostok and Nakhodka, interviewed Russian-speaking residents of Japan, and took an interest in life in Russia’s Far East, studying the history of the Soviet-Japanese War and the relations between the two countries.
In June, Imai joined students from a children’s creative center to research a historical site connected to the detention of Japanese prisoners of war after World War II — in 1946, dozens of detention sites operated in the Primorye region for Japanese servicemen captured during the 1945 Soviet-Japanese War.
A post by the institution described the journalist’s visit as an example of his interest in Japanese history and in preserving the memory of previous generations. People who traveled with Imai around the region said he had a good understanding of Russian and was able to communicate in the language.
