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Russian Missile Drills Stoke Tensions With Japan
The exercises near the islands claimed by Japan comes after a visit to the disputed archipelago by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
TOKYO—Russia held live missile drills near islands claimed by Japan, further straining relations with Tokyo after a visit to the disputed archipelago by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The Russian Pacific Fleet said a submarine, warship and coastal defense system fired missiles at mock enemy vessels in the waters off the southern Kuril Islands in Russia’s far east, according to Russian state news agency Interfax. The report didn’t say when the exercise took place.
The southern Kuril Islands are known in Japanese as the Northern Territories and were seized by Russia from Japan in the final days of World War II. They have been a sore point in bilateral relations ever since.
“Russia’s military buildup on the Northern Territories runs counter to Japan’s position” on the islands, Japanese Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi said late Thursday in response to news of the exercise.
Security analysts said similar missile drills have been held before and are designed to rehearse Russia’s defense of the Sea of Okhotsk, an area vital for Russia’s fleet of ballistic missile submarines.
“The hypothetical enemy is therefore not Japan, but the United States,” said James Brown, an expert on Russia-Japan relations at Temple University in Tokyo. He added Russia is also eager to show China it is still a potent military force after losses in Ukraine.
Nonetheless, the exercise adds to tensions between Moscow and Tokyo that were heightened when Putin visited the disputed islands for the first time earlier this month. He was pictured inspecting a seafood processing facility on the island of Iturup, which Japan calls Etorofu.
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi described the visit as unacceptable and officials lodged protests with Russia. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov responded by summoning the Japanese ambassador in Moscow to convey Russia’s territorial claims over the four disputed islands.
Russia isn’t alone in putting pressure on Japan. Relations with Beijing have been in the deep freeze since Takaichi said late last year that Japan could get entangled in any conflict over Taiwan, a self-ruled island democracy China claims as its own.
China, Russia and North Korea have all expressed displeasure at Japan’s plans to boost military spending. Tokyo says it is necessary because of a worsening security situation in Asia that it blames on China, Russia and North Korea.
In its annual defense report published earlier this month, Tokyo identified the close cooperation between Russia, North Korea and China as a security risk to Japan and its allies.
China, Russia and North Korea all accuse Japan of reverting to the kind of militarism that led to its defeat in World War II, a characterization Japan and allies such as the U.S. and the Philippines reject.
“Japan’s right-wing forces, led by Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, are attempting to revive the spirit of militarism, fabricating narratives to whitewash Japanese colonizers and cast doubt on the postwar international order,” China’s envoy to Russia, Hanhui Zhang, said Thursday in a statement to Russian state media agency TASS.
Write to Junko Fukutome at junko.fukutome@wsj.com
