MOSCOW, October 12. /TASS/. Tokyo’s new illegal sanctions against Russia will not be left without an appropriate response, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in a statement on Wednesday.
"Japan, which unquestioningly follows the West’s anti-Russian course, has imposed new unilateral, illegal sanctions on our country, including a ban on imports of materials ‘related to the production of chemical weapons’ to Russia," the diplomat said.
"It is puzzling that this ‘concern’ about the prohibition of the production and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and against a country that has been a party to the Chemical Weapons Convention since 1997 and that completely eliminated all of its stockpiles in 2017, is shown by a state which even after more than 70 years still has not disposed of a huge amount of chemical munitions on the territory of China it once occupied," she added.
According to the diplomat, the absurdity of the situation is exacerbated by the fact that "Japan has never repented for its criminal experiments during World War Two when it used bacteriological and chemical weapons, including under the umbrella of Unit 731."
Zakharova emphasized that "this unfriendly move by [Japanese Prime Minister] Fumio Kishida’s administration, like all the previous ones, will not go without an appropriate response."
On October 7, sanctions came into effect in Japan in connection with the September 26 government decision to impose a ban on shipments of goods related to the production of chemical weapons to the Russian Federation. The list of goods included 73 kinds of chemicals, including chlorine, methanol, acetone, ethylene and sodium hypochlorite. In addition, exports of 16 types of chemical equipment, such as centrifuges, heat exchangers, and condensers, are banned.