Tokyo, 25 September, /AJMEDIA/
Japan is strongly alarmed by recent airspace breaches by China and Russia and other military activities by them around the country, Defense Minister Minoru Kihara said Tuesday.
Kihara’s remarks came a day after a Russian military patrol plane flew over waters in the Sea of Japan north of Hokkaido three times, prompting an Air Self-Defense Force fighter jet to fire a signal flare for the first time ever, according to the Defense Ministry.
In late August, Japan also confirmed for the first time that a Chinese military spy plane violated Japanese airspace over waters in the East China Sea off islands in Nagasaki Prefecture in southwestern Japan.
“We have a strong sense of crisis over those kinds of cases that have occurred successively in such a short period in waters and airspace surrounding our nation,” Kihara told a press conference in Tokyo.
Kihara also noted that a total of eight Chinese and Russian naval vessels jointly sailed through the Soya Strait between Hokkaido and Sakhalin while passing from the Sea of Japan to the Sea of Okhotsk from Sunday to Monday.
Describing the signal flare use against the Russian plane as an “appropriate decision,” Kihara said Japan will continue to monitor Chinese and Russian military activities “with strong interest” and make “necessary responses” to them.
Japan, along with its close security ally the United States, has been more vigilant against China and Russia’s strengthening military cooperation in recent years, especially since the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022.
