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Moscow sees Tokyo responsible for worsening bilateral relations

Nikolay Nozdrev pointed out that Japan unfolded an unprecedented anti-Russian campaign after Russia launched its special military operation in Ukraine

MOSCOW, August 12. /TASS/. A senior Russian diplomat on Friday blamed the administration of Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida for worsening relations between Russia and Japan.

"The entire responsibility for worsening bilateral relations rests with the Kishida administration which has been pursuing an overtly Russophobic policy in reckless solidarity with Washington," Nikolay Nozdrev, the director of the Third Asian Department at the Russian Foreign Ministry, said at a roundtable hosted by the Federation Council.

Japan unfolded an unprecedented anti-Russian campaign after Russia launched its special military operation in Ukraine, Nozdrev said, and it has "actually been destroying all the good things accumulated in bilateral relations in previous years." The Russian diplomat said those were deliberate moves, "and Japan is seemingly attempting to curry as much favor with its US allies as possible."

And Japan is aware of the inevitable damage its actions would do to the country’s population, Nozdrev noted.

"However, they don’t seem to care about that, because there is a very dangerous and utterly futile idea in their heads - to try and punish Russia in any way and to show to their international partners that Japan has been in pursuit of a success there, which is naturally not happening," he added.

To justify the difficulties facing the people of Japan, the country’s authorities have been engaged in "active propaganda to defame and vilify Russia and its legitimate moves to ensure national security in a strategic perspective," Nozdrev concluded.