The authorities of Russia reported this Tuesday the detention of a Japanese reporter in the region of Sakhalin, which includes the island of the same name and the Kuril Islands, whom they accuse of carrying out espionage activities for the intelligence services of Japan.
The detainee, an employee of the newspaper "Hokkaido Shimbun", has been sent to preventive prison in Moscow after being transferred from this region of the extreme eastern Russia, according to the statement released by the Federal Security Service (FSB) and cited by the Russian agency Interfax.
"In the territory of the Sakhalin region, the illegal activity of an accredited correspondent before the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia (...), a Japanese citizen, suspected of espionage in favor of one of the Japanese secret services, has been thwarted," the agency celebrated.
According to the FSB, the journalist, whose identity has not been disclosed, "was collecting and storing information related to the country's defense capabilities, in order to transmit it on behalf of the national intelligence services for use against the security of the Russian Federation" and was arrested "the day before his departure" from Russian territory.
Bilateral relations between Moscow and Tokyo have deteriorated since last August when Russian President Vladimir Putin made a visit to the Kuril Islands, an archipelago administratively integrated into the Sakhalin region and which Japan claims, referring to it as the Northern Territories.
Japan has postponed for decades the signing of a peace treaty with Russia while waiting to regain sovereignty over these islands. Tokyo relies on the Bilateral Treaty of Trade and Borders signed with Moscow on February 7, 1855, while the Kremlin invokes the international agreements signed at the end of World War II.