Russia expels 8 Japanese embassy employees

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Moscow is expelling eight employees of the Japanese embassy the Russian Foreign Ministry said Wednesday, stressing that they must leave Russian territories by May 10.

Moscow had summoned on April 27 a representative of the Japanese embassy in Russia, and the authorities told him that since the start of the war in Ukraine, Tokyo had taken an openly hostile anti-Russian course, destroying mutually beneficial cooperation.

"The apotheosis of this line was the expulsion of eight Russian diplomats from Japan. Guided by the principle of reciprocity, the Russian side demanded that eight Japanese diplomatic workers leave our country by May 10," the ministry said in a statement.

Moscow also cast the blame in full for the diplomatic developments on the Japanese authorities, as they had made a choice pivoting away from friendly constructive relations with Russia.

Japan had openly taken the position of fully supporting neo-Nazi formations operating on Ukrainian soil, and provided political, economic, and military assistance to the country's authorities, the ministry added.

The Japanese Embassy in Moscow said Tokyo had not agreed with Russia's statements in connection with the expulsion of Japanese diplomats, with the country's ambassador protesting at a meeting at the Russian Foreign Ministry.

Tokyo's Public Security Intelligence Agency (PSAI) removed earlier this month the neo-Nazi designation of the far-right nationalist Ukrainian Azov battalion from Japan's 2021 handbook on international terrorism.

"Recently, there have been cases of misinformation published as though the PSIA recognized the Azov battalion as a neo-Nazi organization. We regret the occurrence of this situation," the Japanese agency said, apologizing for the designation of a neo-Nazi organization as neo-Nazi.

"[This] does not mean that the agency has recognized the Azov battalion as a neo-Nazi organization," it stressed despite the battalion's logo itself bearing Nazi insignia.

Azov is said to have been behind many war crimes in Ukraine, from killing civilians and trying to shift the blame onto Moscow, to killing prisoners of war of the Russian armed forces.

The National Guard of Ukraine's Twitter account had released a video boasting about Azov fighters greasing their bullets with lard to be used against Muslim Chechens on the Russian side. 

The cancellation of the terrorist designation came after intelligence suggested that Azov militants had been planning terrorist attacks in Lvov against Western diplomats to force NATO's arm into imposing a no-fly zone over Ukraine.

Nationalists also faced accusations from Moscow of holding hostages in a maternity hospital in Mariupol, which would not be the first crime committed by the notorious far-right neo-Nazi group, as they opened fire on civilians during their evacuation from the city, killing at least two people and injuring four others.

Tokyo did not only openly voice support for Kiev's neo-Nazis, but it also joined the Western bid to sanction Russia and imposed harsh sanctions against the country, not to mention voting in favor of removing the federation from the United Nations Human Rights Council.