What Are Russian Spies Doing in Japan?

A New York Times investigation has revealed how Russian military intelligence turned Tokyo into a critical supply hub for its war on Ukraine, exploiting Japan's weak espionage laws and its status as a high tech manufacturing powerhouse. Ukrainian government estimates cited in the report suggest that around 90 percent of Russian missiles and drones recovered on the battlefield contain parts made in Japan, a dependency that has quietly kept Moscow's war machine running even as Western sanctions tightened.

The story begins in 2020, when hundreds of Russian intelligence officers were expelled from European capitals following a string of exposed operations, scattering GRU personnel across friendlier territory. When Russia's full scale invasion of Ukraine began in 2022, many of those banished spies resurfaced in an unexpected place, Japan, a country long considered one of the West's most reliable partners and now, in an ironic twist the report highlights, an unwitting supplier to the very war Tokyo has publicly condemned.

At the centre of the operation is the 20th Directorate , a previously unidentified unit within the GRU , Russia's main military intelligence agency. During the Soviet era the unit reportedly handled liaison work with third world states and national liberation movements, though its exact present day mandate remains undisclosed. Unlike the armed operatives of spy fiction, the officers described in the investigation carry business cards rather than weapons, posing as diplomats and businessmen while working to acquire battlefield technology and smuggle it back to Russia.

The man running the Tokyo station is Maksim Vladimirovich Filchenkov, a 49 year old career GRU officer who took up the post in February 2024, just as Russia's war was shifting from artillery heavy fighting toward drone warfare and Ukraine was gaining a technological edge Moscow badly needed to offset. Filchenkov maintains a cover identity as an employee of Russian state airline Aeroflot , working from a 22nd floor office a short walk from the headquarters of Japan's National Police Agency. GRU officers have used Aeroflot postings as cover since the Soviet era, and his prior intelligence experience made it easier to cultivate ties with Japanese logistics companies that ship goods between the two countries.

Rather than routing equipment to Russia directly, the network reportedly relies on a shadow trade model, sending goods through third countries still willing to trade with Moscow. Vietnam emerges in the investigation as the single largest destination for Japan's sensitive dual use exports and simultaneously the largest channel funnelling such technology onward into Russia, effectively laundering the supply chain around Tokyo's own export controls. A named intermediary, Tokyo firm Proco Air run by businessman Takehiko Miki, is cited as one link in that chain, with Miki telling reporters he began working closely with Filchenkov after the two met around 2018.

The human cost of this pipeline is stark. After a Russian Kh 101 cruise missile struck a residential building in Kyiv in May, killing at least 24 civilians, investigators sifting through the wreckage reportedly found a Japanese made electronic component that had already been banned from export to Russia. Officials tracking such supply chains note that a single chip can change hands five times and cross three borders before it ends up guiding a missile into someone's home, illustrating just how difficult these dual use goods are to trace and restrict once they leave a factory floor.

Japan's muted response, despite its vocal political support for Ukraine, is partly explained by a structural gap in its own security architecture. Tokyo has no dedicated foreign intelligence agency, a legacy of the constraints imposed on Japan's military and intelligence capabilities under its postwar constitution. Ukraine has pressed the issue repeatedly, sending at least eight formal diplomatic letters to Japan's Foreign Ministry in April 2025 alone, each detailing Japanese components recovered from Russian weapons used in attacks on civilians.

Following the report, Japan's chief government spokesman Minoru Kihara acknowledged the need to counter foreign intelligence activity threatening national security and said Tokyo must address the issue with greater rigour, while declining to comment directly on the Times findings. Officials say legal changes to strengthen counterespionage capabilities are now under consideration, a belated response to a network that has operated largely unchecked for years.