Warsaw and kyiv announce agreement to speed up transit of Ukrainian grain

2023-10-03 11:10:48

Japan embarrassed by the visit of one of its deputies to Russia

The Russian Foreign Ministry reported a face-to-face meeting on Monday between the deputy head of Russian diplomacy, Andrei Rudenko, and Muneo Suzuki, deputy of the Japanese Innovation Party, a populist party in the ‘opposition.

This visit took the Japanese government by surprise, which criticized this personal initiative on Tuesday. “The government was not informed by Mr. Suzuki of his visit to Russia”Japanese government spokesperson Hirokazu Matsuno said Tuesday during a regular press briefing.

Tokyo has strongly condemned the Russian invasion of Ukraine from the start and has adopted sanctions against Moscow, like its Western allies. Japan therefore advises all its citizens against traveling to Russia “whatever the reason”recalled the Japanese Minister of Foreign Affairs, Yoko Kamikawa, suggesting that this instruction also applied to parliamentarians.

“We are unable to comment on the reason for MP Muneo Suzuki’s visit to Russia and the details of his agenda”added Ms. Kamikawa.

The MP left for Moscow on Sunday “for an inspection trip”declared Tuesday to Agence France-Presse its secretary Shinji Akamatsu, specifying that he was making this trip “in the name of his own vision of the national interest”. But the move also embarrasses his own party, which has said it plans to summon Mr. Suzuki upon his return to explain himself.

In a statement, the Russian Foreign Ministry mentioned “the important contribution” of Mr. Suzuki to the development of Russian-Japanese relations, while regretting that this old bilateral cooperation is “now deliberately destroyed” by the sanctions against Russia adopted by Japan “to please the United States” and by “the anti-Russian orientation of the “collective West””.

Aged 75, Muneo Suzuki has long been known to be in favor of strengthening Russian-Japanese relations. He was also accused and convicted of corruption in the early 2000s, which forced him to leave the Liberal Democratic Party (PLD, conservative right), the main Japanese political party, in power. But this sulphurous past did not prevent him in the 2010s from becoming an informal diplomatic advisor to the then Japanese Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, when the latter sought to renew ties with Moscow.