Leaked Documents: Russia plans to invade Japan
Asia
According to an email from a Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) whistleblower, Russia was prepared to invade Japan in the summer of 2021. Before President Vladimir Putin started an all-out invasion of Ukraine, the threat was being discussed months beforehand, the source told Newsweek.
A Russian human rights activist who is currently in exile in France received an email from an FSB agent known as the Wind of Change. It expresses the frustration and rage over the conflict that started on February 24 when Putin invaded the neighbouring Ukraine. The agent emailed editor of a website dedicated to fighting corruption, Vladimir Osechkin, on March 17.
An expert on the FSB has examined a letter from a whistleblower to Russian journalist Alexei Osechkin. The correspondence has been translated from Russian to English since March by Igor Sushko, the executive director of the Wind of Change Research Group. The Russian propaganda machine was also started, and the whistleblower provided movements of electronic warfare helicopters targeting Japan.
Islands of Kuril
There has never been a signed peace treaty officially ending World War II, partly due to disagreements over a set of islands claimed by Japan but seized by Russia. At the conclusion of World War II, the USSR occupied the Kuril Island chain’s Kunashiri, Etorofu, Shikotan, and Habomai islands. The islands are referred to as Tokyo’s ‘Northern Territories’.
The Kuril Islands are a ‘major stumbling barrier’ between Moscow and Tokyo, said the FSB operative. The islands provide a lot of military and political advantages due to their position between the massive Japanese island of Hokkaido and Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula.
‘The fact that Japan was a loser in World War II still precludes it from establishing an official military force, a foreign intelligence service, among other things, is a cornerstone of its contemporary geopolitics. A change [or perhaps deletion] of the Land of the Rising Sun’s postwar status would result from the repatriation of the Kuril Islands’,they wrote.
Beijing, which sees the Kuril Islands as a ‘gift’ for China, deems it untenable for Tokyo to win the Kuril Islands conflict with Russia. The whistleblower proceeded by saying that the islands serve as ‘a negotiating tool’ for Moscow. The leaker stated that former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe had previously prioritised Russia ‘negotiation’ and revamping the nation’s intelligence apparatus at the time.
Declassified
In August 2021, the FSB will declassify graphic information about tomorrow how Soviet citizens were tortured by Japanese special services during World War II. Declassified material included data from the interrogation of Otozo Yamada, a general in the Imperial Japanese Army. The FSB whistleblower said that the service was tasked with launching an ‘information campaign against Japan in Russian society’.
Russia’s FSB secret service declassified previously classified documents in August 2021, which it said showed Japan planned to use a bacteriological bomb in 1944. The documents were published by the FSB with links from pro-Kremlin media outlets, including one titled ‘Evidence of Japan’s preparations for war with the USSR declassified’. An RBC report, published on August 20, 2021, states that experiments were carried out on prisoners at a concentration camp in the Harbin region.
It was believed that Japan was known for its ‘brutal biological experimentation, demonstrated inhumanity, and had a tendency toward Nazism’. According to the source, the majority of Russia’s combat-ready forces have been sent to Ukraine. Due to the ‘maniacal yearning for war by the leadership,’ they concluded, war was unavoidable for Russia.
