Japanese Embassy "confused" about reason for ambassador's absence after summons from Foreign Ministry: Lavrov

Russia summoned Japanese Ambassador Akira Muto after Tokyo lodged a complaint over Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit to Iturup, but the embassy “got confused” and said the diplomat would not be able to visit the Foreign Ministry either on August 14 or 17, without clearly explaining the reason. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said this at a press conference, TASS reports.

“When we learned how Ms. Takaichi, her Foreign Minister, described our president’s visit to her own land, to her own citizens, we immediately summoned the Japanese ambassador. We were not given a very clear answer from the embassy, ​​they were confused, and then they explained that the ambassador would not be able to visit either on Friday, August 14, or Monday, August 17, that is, today, because he is either not in Moscow or is not feeling well. We never understood it,” Lavrov said, answering TASS’s question about Moscow’s reaction to the Japanese side’s protest over Putin’s visit to Iturup.

The Russian Foreign Minister noted that such a response from the Japanese side is surprising, since the ambassador is known for his indefatigable energy.

“He arrived here several years ago and is constantly active somewhere, trying to meet with someone,” the minister noted.

In this regard, the Russian Foreign Minister said that recently Muto, without coordination, without even informing the ministry, brought some delegation of businessmen. It is unclear what the agenda was, it is unclear who he planned to meet with.

“But as a result, representatives of both our ministry and the Ministry of Industry and Trade met with them. But suddenly it became clear that at the end of the visit, the ambassador had organized some incomprehensible working group, and then they started to refuse,” Lavrov clarified.

“That is, with such unquenchable enthusiasm, it sometimes happens that a person’s health is not good. But in any case, we have summoned the ambassador. He should come to the Foreign Ministry, and we will talk about both the behavior of the Japanese leadership in connection with President Putin’s visit to the Russian island of Iturup, and about how the ambassador should structure his work in the host country, respecting both its laws and the procedures that exist for foreign diplomats in that country, in this case, Russia,” Lavrov noted.

Recall that Putin had earlier arrived in the Sakhalin region, where the president held a working meeting with the governor of the region, Valery Limanrenko, and on Iturup island he got acquainted with the work of a number of social facilities.

Later, the Japanese Foreign Ministry protested Putin's visit to Iturup, which Tokyo considers its own, along with the other three southern Kuril islands, even though they became part of the USSR after World War II, and Moscow's position is that Russia's sovereignty over them is not in doubt.