Russia was preparing to attack Japan in the summer of 2021, months before President
Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, an email featuring a letter from a whistleblower at Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB), shared with
Newsweek, reveals.
The email, dated March 17, was sent by the agent, dubbed
the Wind of Change, to Vladimir Osechkin, a Russian human-rights activist who runs the anti-corruption website Gulagu.net, and is now exiled in France.
The FSB agent writes regular dispatches to Osechkin, revealing the
anger and discontent inside the service over the war that began when Putin invaded neighboring Ukraine on February 24.
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The whistleblower noted that former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was at the time already placing a strong emphasis on both trying to "negotiate" with Russia over the Kuril Islands issue and reforming the country's intelligence service.
"Historically, Japan's military intelligence has always been at a high level, but after the defeat in World War II it was simply abolished at the behest of the victors," they wrote.
In August 2021, the FSB declassified graphic information about how Soviet citizens were tortured by Japanese special services during World War II.
The FSB whistleblower said that the service was tasked with launching an "information campaign against Japan in Russian society."
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"Initially, as early as August 8, the Russian mass media were rather stingy in their comments on the news: they claimed that Japan had been preparing for war with the USSR since 1938, plans of the attack were being hatched, diversions were made, etc," the whistleblower wrote.
"But on August 16, the Russian media literally exploded at the same time, discussing the declassified documents in a completely different tone: The Japanese allegedly conducted terrible biological experiments on Soviet prisoners, and treated Soviet prisoners extremely badly. The details of the plague lice that were used to torture prisoners were scrawled all over the place. Russia Today, the main mouthpiece of international propaganda, also joined in."
The whistleblower in their email included multiple links from pro-Kremlin media outlets on the matter, including one titled "How the USSR saved the world from the biological war that Japan was preparing" and another called "Evidence of Japan's preparations for war with the USSR declassified."
