Russian fishing ships seen off Fukushima reflects Moscow’s ‘hypocrisy’ over Japanese seafood ban

They said that Russian fishermen catching fish off Fukushima to sell to their country’s consumers suggest that either the vessel operators know that treated water discharged from the nuclear plant does not pose a danger, or they just do not care about Moscow’s claim of food safety issues over fish caught in the area.

The Sankei newspaper reported on Wednesday that at least three Russian trawlers had been tracked operating off northeast Japan on January 14, getting within 32km from the Fukushima nuclear plant, which was damaged by the magnitude 9.1 earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan in 2011.

The Japan coastguard has deployed unmanned aerial vehicles to shadow the ships and shared the data with the Japanese Fisheries Agency.

The ships did not enter Japanese territorial waters, which extend 22km from the coast at the low-water mark, and were operating legitimately within Japan’s exclusive economic zone, which extends out 200 nautical miles (370.4km) from the coast.

Tokyo and Moscow signed an agreement on reciprocal access to fishing resources in each other’s EEZs in December 2022, with the agreement coming into effect in November last year.

While the ships were legally hauling in fish, Russia is displaying double standards, according to analysts, given that it announced in October restrictions on imports of fish and seafood products from Japan as a “precautionary measure” after Japan started releasing treated water from the plant into the Pacific.

The Japanese government has criticised Moscow’s decision, saying it had “no scientific basis, is unjust and regrettable”.

“If this is indeed the case, then it is yet more confirmation that the Russian ban on imports has nothing to do with public health and has been done entirely for