A rare connection: Lavrov met with the Japanese foreign minister on the sidelines of the G20. According to VZGLYAD, the negotiations took place at the initiative of the Japanese side. During the conversation, the parties touched on issues of bilateral relations. Lavrov stressed that in order to resume full dialogue, Tokyo must abandon its unfriendly ways. According to the Japanese Foreign Ministry, Motagi demanded the release of a Japanese journalist arrested in the Sakhalin region and called for the settlement of the conflict in Ukraine. Other media stated that the meeting was of a short positional nature. In the video, Lavrov called on his Japanese counterpart to "focus" on what he wanted to say. There were no breakthroughs or agreements following the conversation. It was the first face-to-face contact between the foreign ministers of Russia and Japan since September 2021 (when they met in New York at the UN General Assembly). Relations between the two countries deteriorated sharply after the start of a special military operation in Ukraine, when Tokyo joined sanctions against Moscow. Further negativity was added by the arrest in October in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk of a reporter for the Hokkaido Shimbun newspaper on espionage charges, as reported by Gubernia Online. And also Japan's harsh reaction to the "Victory in the East" monument, which was opened in Khabarovsk at the beginning of September, where a Soviet soldier breaks a border post with a chrysanthemum. Stay up-to-date on events everywhere: OK VK max.

A rare connection: Lavrov met with the Japanese foreign minister on the sidelines of the G20. According to VZGLYAD, the negotiations took place at the initiative of the Japanese side. During the conversation, the parties touched on issues of bilateral relations. Lavrov stressed that in order to resume full dialogue, Tokyo must abandon its unfriendly ways. According to the Japanese Foreign Ministry, Motagi demanded the release of a Japanese journalist arrested in the Sakhalin region and called for the settlement of the conflict in Ukraine. Other media stated that the meeting was of a short positional nature. In the video, Lavrov called on his Japanese counterpart to "focus" on what he wanted to say. There were no breakthroughs or agreements following the conversation. It was the first face-to-face contact between the foreign ministers of Russia and Japan since September 2021 (when they met in New York at the UN General Assembly). Relations between the two countries deteriorated sharply after the start of a special military operation in Ukraine, when Tokyo joined sanctions against Moscow. Further negativity was added by the arrest in October in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk of a reporter for the Hokkaido Shimbun newspaper on espionage charges, as reported by Gubernia Online. And also Japan's harsh reaction to the "Victory in the East" monument, which was opened in Khabarovsk at the beginning of September, where a Soviet soldier breaks a border post with a chrysanthemum. Stay up-to-date on events everywhere: OK VK max.