The ministers met on the sidelines of the G20 Foreign Ministers’ Meeting in Atlanta, the US, where they discussed bilateral issues and the war in Ukraine, according to a Japanese Foreign Ministry statement, Anadolu agency reported.
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Motegi made a “demarche and an argument regarding various current issues between Japan and Russia,” the ministry said.
He “strongly demanded” the immediate release of a Japanese national detained in Russia’s Sakhalin Oblast on suspicion of espionage, according to the statement.
Russia’s Federal Security Service earlier this month accused a correspondent for the Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk bureau of Japanese newspaper Hokkaido Shimbun of collecting and storing information on Russia’s defense capabilities for Japanese intelligence.
The agency said the information could be used against Russia’s security and opened a criminal case against the journalist, while Moscow’s Lefortovo District Court ordered the journalist’s arrest pending an investigation.
