Japan demands Russia release detained journalist in rare G20 talks

Japan's Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi demanded the immediate release of detained journalist Yuki Imai during a rare face-to-face meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov at the Group of 20 summit in the United States, the Japanese foreign ministry said on Saturday. The encounter marked the first formal talks between the two nations' top diplomats since September 2021 in New York.

Speaking to Lavrov in Washington, Motegi "strongly demanded the immediate release" of the reporter, who was arrested this month on spying accusations on Sakhalin island and is currently held in Moscow, according to the ministry statement. The diplomats agreed they "will maintain communication, even amid the severe situation in Japan-Russia relations," the ministry added.

Spying accusations

Russian authorities announced earlier this month that they had detained Imai on espionage charges while he was reporting on Sakhalin, an island in Russia's Far East. Tokyo confirmed this week that consular officials had finally met with the detained journalist for the first time since his arrest, though details of their conversation were not disclosed.

Territorial disputes

The rare ministerial meeting comes as relations between Tokyo and Moscow have deteriorated sharply since Japan joined Western sanctions against Russia over the Ukraine war. The two countries remain locked in a decades-old dispute over the Kuril islands — known in Japan as the Northern Territories — which Soviet forces seized in 1945.

In August, Japan protested President Vladimir Putin's visit to the disputed territory, the first such trip by a Russian leader since Dmitry Medvedev in 2010. Tokyo also lodged objections when Moscow announced plans to conduct missile tests off one of the contested islands later that same month.