TOKYO: Six Russian navy ships have passed through the Soya Strait between Cape Soya in the northernmost Japan prefecture of Hokkaido and the Russian island of Sakhalin, Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno told a press conference Tuesday.

The Japanese government has told the Russian side that it is closely watching, with grave concern, the Russian military’s growing activities in areas around Japan amid the crisis over Ukraine, the top government spokesman said.

“The Russian military has been carrying out extraordinary naval drills on a large scale in the Sea of Okhotsk and other areas since February in conjunction with Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, and the six ships are believed to have participated in the drills,” Matsuno said.

“We’ll collect information (on the incident) and be on alert with a sense of tension,” he said.

According to the Japanese Defense Ministry, the Maritime Self-Defense Force spotted the six ships at a point some 130 kilometers southeast of Cape Soya, the northernmost part of Hokkaido, around midnight Sunday (3 p.m. GMT). They sailed west across the Soya Strait toward the Sea of Japan.

The incident came after 10 Russian warships passed through the Tsugaru Strait between Hokkaido and Japan’s Honshu main island last week.

JIJI Press