SEOUL, South Korea — The screening of an old documentary by Russian officials in front of a tiny audience in Taipei would not normally generate headlines in Tokyo, but against the backdrop of ongoing Russian power plays in Northeast Asia, it did exactly that.
The screening of the 1945 documentary “Defeating Militarist Japan” before 20 guests at Russia’s de facto embassy in Taiwan gained attention because of the wider regional context.
“Officials in Taiwan say they believe the closed-door screening of the film last week by the de facto Russian Embassy in Taipei is part of a new effort to spread and bolster China’s ‘new militarism’ line against Japan, a key, though unofficial, ally of Taipei,” reported The Japan Times Friday.
Taiwanese security officials told the newspaper they were monitoring Chinese-Russian “cognitive warfare” actions.
The screening came days after Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi lambasted the raising of a new Russian World War II statue in the Siberian city of Khabarovsk on Sept. 5.
Earlier, on Aug. 20, Russia conducted missile drills in the Kuril Islands, northeast of Japan’s northernmost main island, Hokkaido. The exercises followed the first-ever visit to the region by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Japan claims the islands, seized by Moscow’s forces at the end of World War II.
Earlier, in August and in May, China and Russia had warned against Japan’s remilitarization and the loosening of its post-1945 ban on arms sales.
A different Russian endeavor went public on Sept. 7: the opening of a road-bridge linking it to North Korea.
These regional flexes maintain Moscow’s centrality in the “CRINK” — the unofficial axis uniting the anti-Western states of China, Russia, Iran and North Korea. In the Middle East, Iran is under U.S. attack, but in the Far East, the other CRINK states, all nuclear-armed, hold firm.
The actions also reinforce Russia’s manifest destiny.
The nation’s double-headed eagle — the medieval, imperial symbol that adorns the national coat of arms to this day — gazes both east and west.
Since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, it has been nodding westward. Recent actions indicate an eastern rebalance.
Unlike the bloody and devastating war the Kremlin unleashed on its European border, no bullets are flying over its frontiers in the Russian Far East.
Compared to battling NATO-supported Kyiv, prodding Tokyo is cost-free.
Japan’s customarily risk-averse polity is bound by a pacifist constitution, and Tokyo is diplomatically and militarily subservient to Washington. There, the Trump administration has reversed prior administrations’ confrontational policies toward Russia.
Not only are Russia’s maneuvers low-risk and low-cost, but they are high-reward. Experts say they play to domestic jingoism, while fortifying relations with military ally North Korea and essential economic partner China.
Recent actions are almost certainly coordinated.
“The Russians are world-class at this,” said Tokyo-based Lance Gatling, a former officer with U.S. Forces Japan. “This is all completely choreographed.”
Moscow goes kinetic in the west, creative in the east
China was infuriated when Ms. Takaichi stated last November that a Taiwan contingency would be “existential” for Japan, thereby enabling the activation of the Self-Defense Force.
Beijing initiated a multidomain pressure campaign against Japan, ranging from blocking seafood exports to questioning Tokyo’s sovereignty over the Ryukyu Islands.
Russia seems to be joining China in putting the boot into Japan.
On Sept. 4, a 15-meter-high monument depicting a Soviet soldier shattering a border post was unveiled in Khabarovsk, memorializing the massive offensive the Soviet Union launched in the final days of World War II. That shattered Japanese forces in Manchuria and Korea, while seizing the strategic Kuril Islands and Sakhalin.
Across the border post was a cracked chrysanthemum crest, representing Japan’s emperor. Russians consider it symbolic of Japanese militarism; Japanese, of their nationhood.
Quietly stated fears have long simmered in the Russian Far East of its outpost status: The bulk of the state is far to the west, on the other side of the world’s biggest country. Hence, the statue provides reassurance: The center remembers the periphery.
“It’s an inexpensive way to say, ‘We are still here’ and to tell the locals they are resisting Japanese imperialism,” said Mr. Gatling. “Russians, even before the Soviets, were given to bombastic display.”
The display infuriated the conservative Ms. Takaichi. On X, she wrote that the statue was “absolutely unacceptable” and “strongly requested the Russian side to halt the installation or remove it, considering the sentiment of the Japanese people.”
That fell on deaf ears in Moscow, which had earlier gotten into a diplomatic spat with Tokyo over missile drills in the Kurils, which Japan calls its “Northern Territories.”
“Japan is not going to create trouble,” said Seoul-based Russian scholar Andrei Lankov. “It is safe to annoy Japan; Japan cannot fight back.”
Similarly, the Kremlin has excellent reasons to shore up relations with China, with which it conducts regular naval and aerial drills, and occasional ground exercises, in the region.
Though it has not transferred arms, China is a critical supplier of dual-use technologies to the Kremlin, as well as being Russia’s biggest trade partner and the biggest buyer of its energy.
Even so, bilateral relations remain transactional.
“It is not an alliance … there is a great deal of mutual distrust,” said Mr. Lankov, who teaches at Seoul’s Kookmin University. “But for the time being, they are sort of in the same boat.”
That explains Moscow’s actions in Northeast Asia, but there is another dynamic at play in hypernationalist Russia. There, despite economic woes, citizens remain proud of their central role in Allied victory in World War II.
“It is positioning itself against Japan for domestic use, to show a hardline that does not cost the average person,” said Mr. Lankov. “The price of being hawkish is reasonable.”
Mr. Gatling agreed, saying Russia’s hybrid maneuvers in the east mirror kinetic actions in the west.
“They are showing the Japanese, ‘We own the Northern Territories, don’t expect us to give these things away,’” he said. “They are saying, ‘Look at New Russia, Crimea and Donbas: Don’t screw with us!’”
“New Russia” is the Black Sea coastal corridor senior Russian officials aim to capture, linking Donbas and Crimea with Transnistria. If seized, Ukraine would lose its last remaining slice of coastline.
Meanwhile, North Korea is the only nation that has openly joined Russia’s war against Ukraine. It has supplied millions of munitions and a divisional-size ground force.
With trade between the two sanctioned states expanding massively, a new road bridge across the Tumen River was opened on Sept. 6. It provides a new transport corridor, but its importance may be more symbolic than logistical.
“This is not a bridge between Russia and North Korea; it is a bridge between nowhere and nowhere,” said Mr. Lankov. “It is 250 km to the nearest Russian city on a narrow road, and roughly the same distance to a city in North Korea, on dirt roads that are unsuitable for large vehicles, and sometimes closed by weather.”
He conceded, “It could be useful if you want to ship something quickly — but is much more expensive.”
The neighbors are already connected by air, rail and sea links. The latter two have handled shipments of arms and troops from North Korea into the Russian interior, and thence to the zero line.
It is not just the bridge that likely pleased Pyongyang: The Khabarovsk statue would also have been well-received.
State founder Kim Il-sung earned his chops as an anti-Japanese guerrilla before joining the Red Army in the Russian Far East, and his semi-mythical combat feats are central to state propaganda.
“I’d think the North Koreans are an audience for it,” Mr. Gatling said. “They’ll think this is really cool.”
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