Arab News Japan

TOKYO: Russian President Vladimir Putin criticized Japan’s history school textbooks for “ignoring the truth by failing to state who dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of WW2,” Russian and Japanese media reported.

In a speech given at the ceremony for the Russian Person of Cultural Merit presentation on March 25, Putin said, “In Japan, one is not supposed to say who dropped the atomic bomb even on memorial days set aside for mourning those events.”

Moreover, although it is unclear just which textbooks the Russian President was talking about, Putin went on to say that he had come up with a theory that Japan is following the United States, and Western countries are distorting historical perceptions, and further that “Japanese textbooks do not explain that the United States committed genocide and thus ignore the truth.”

In doing so, Putin has asserted his awareness of Japan and hopes to persuade the Russian people that Japan is a “country that is overly obsequious toward the United States.”

Putin’s remarks come when bilateral relations between Moscow and Tokyo are deteriorating rapidly due to Japan imposing sanctions against Russia for “invading Ukraine,” and Russia’s response. Moscow took revenge measures related to the territorial dispute that dashed Tokyo’s hopes of getting back at least two of four islands north of Hokkaido that Russia occupied at the closing days of WW2.