RUSSIA ARRESTS JAPANESE JOURNALIST ON SPYING SUSPICION

Russia's Federal Security Service, the FSB, said on Tuesday that it had arrested a Japanese journalist on Sakhalin Island on suspicion of spying. The FSB said the man, who worked for the Hokkaido Shimbun newspaper, was suspected of gathering information on Russia's defence capability for a Japanese intelligence agency. It said he was detained as he prepared to leave the country and was then flown to Moscow. Released video showed masked agents arresting him in a hotel room before he was escorted onto a flight. He later appeared before the Lefortovo District Court, which ordered him held for two months pending the investigation. The FSB did not name the suspect.

Sakhalin region includes Sakhalin Island and the four southernmost Kuril islands, which Japan calls the Northern Territories. The islands have been disputed since the Soviet Union took them from Japan at the end of the Second World War, preventing the two countries from signing a peace treaty. President Vladimir Putin visited one of the islands, Iturup, in August, reported as his first such visit. The arrest comes amid what has been described as a rise in tensions between Russia and Japan since that trip. Decades of diplomatic efforts to settle the dispute have produced no agreement.

Japan's Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said Putin's visit to Iturup was "incompatible with the Japanese position on the Northern Territories" and "absolutely unacceptable". She said it was a further blow to ties already strained over the war in Ukraine. Moscow responded by summoning Japan's ambassador to protest what it called "anti-Russia" statements from Takaichi and other officials, saying Russia's sovereignty over the southern Kuril Islands was "absolutely unshakable". No date has been set for when the investigation into the journalist will conclude.