A pro-Kremlin Japanese politician has said Russia is trying to arrange a meeting of the two nations’ foreign ministers in July, although analysts suggest that Muneo Suzuki’s efforts to act as a go-between are unlikely to bear fruit.
Suzuki, who represents a constituency in Hokkaido and returned to the ruling Liberal Democratic Party in 2025 after 23 years as an independent member of the Diet, met senior Russian government officials in Moscow on Monday.
Andrey Rudenko, deputy foreign minister in charge of Asian affairs, told Suzuki that Moscow would be willing to arrange talks between Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and his Japanese counterpart, Toshimitsu Motegi, on the sidelines of a meeting of ministers attending the Asean summit in the Philippines in July.
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Russia’s TASS news agency quoted Suzuki as telling his hosts that Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi was in favour of closer bilateral ties and that he was strongly opposed when Tokyo aligned with the US administration’s Moscow policy under then- president Joe Biden.
“I very much want to restore Japan-Russia relations to the state they were in under [former prime minister Shinzo] Abe and [Russian] President [Vladimir] Putin,” Suzuki said in a meeting with Grigory Karasin, head of the Russian Federation Council Committee on International Affairs.
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“Takaichi said that she is very well aware of the importance of Japan-Russia ties,” he added. “I have consistently taken a negative view of the fact that Japan, at the request of Biden, has adopted cold ties with Russia.”