A move by Japan to provide Patriot air defence systems to Ukraine will have "grave consequences" for Russia-Japan ties, Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said today.
Relations between Moscow and Tokyo, already difficult, have deteriorated sharply since Russia sent tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine in February 2022.
Japan has joined its Western allies in imposing sweeping economic sanctions on Russia.
Last week, Japan said it would prepare to ship Patriot airdefence missiles to the United States after revising its armsexport guidelines, in Tokyo's first major overhaul of suchexport curbs in nine years.
Although Japan's new export controls still prevent itfrom shipping weapons to countries that are at war, it mayindirectly benefit Ukraine in its war with Russia as it givesthe United States extra capacity to provide military aid toKyiv.
"The Japanese side loses control over the weapons withwhich Washington can now do whatever it wants," Zakharova told aweekly briefing. "It cannot be ruled out that under an alreadytested scheme Patriot missiles will end up in Ukraine."
Such a scenario would be "interpreted as unambigously hostile actions against Russia and will lead to grave consequences for Japan in the context of bilateral relations", she said.
Earlier this month, Japan and South Korea both scrambled jets to monitor joint flights by Chinese and Russian bombers and fighters near their territories.
Russia and Japan have yet to conclude a treaty formally ending World War Two hostilities due to an old territorial dispute involving a chain of Pacific islands known in Japan as the Northern Territories and in Russia as the Southern Kuriles.
Even before the Ukraine conflict, Tokyo had complained about increased Russian military deployments on the islands, which the Soviet Union seized from Japan at the end of World WarTwo.
Ukraine says policeman killed in train station strike
A Russian strike on a train station filled with fleeing civilians in the Ukrainian city of Kherson killed a policeman and wounded four other people, the interior minister has said.
Igor Klymenko said Moscow had launched "a massive bombing" of the southern city, with the head of the military administration warning of continued drone bombardment after the deadly railway strike.
Russian troops occupied Kherson shortly after Moscow invaded Ukraine in late February 2022.
They eventually withdrew under pressure from Ukrainian forces but have continued to bombard the city from across the Dnipro river.
"Kherson in the evening. Around 140 civilians waiting at the station for an evacuation train. That's the moment that the enemy began a massive bombing of the city," Mr Klymenko said on Telegram.
One policeman was killed and four other people, two civilians and two policemen, were wounded by shrapnel, he said.
The interior ministry named the policeman killed as 29-year-old Igor Misyun, adding that he was "survived by his wife and two children".
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that "a number of civilians were on the scene" when the strike hit, adding that emergency services had responded to the incident.
The Ukrainian railway company Ukrzaliznytsya said on Telegram that a train and the station were damaged but that "the situation is under control and the railway is ready to continue functioning".
Later, the head of the Kherson military administration, Roman Mrochko, said the city was "under a drone attack" and urged citizens to take shelter.
He said the attack included Shahed drones, the Iranian-made weapons often used by Russia to strike Ukraine.
Across the border in Russia, the governor of Rostov said "a drone was shot down by air defence forces over" the region.
"Consequences on the ground are being clarified," added Vasily Golubev.
The attacks came after the Kremlin acknowledged a Ukrainian attack had damaged a warship in the occupied Crimean port of Feodosia, in what Kyiv and its Western allies called a major setback for the Russian navy.
Ukraine said its air force destroyed the Novocherkassk landing ship, with Mr Zelensky joking on social media that the vessel had now joined "the Russian underwater Black Sea fleet".
Ukraine nevertheless announced a setback on the eastern front.
Commander-in-chief Valeriy Zaluzhny said troops had pulled back in the town of Maryinka, close to the key Russian-held city of Donetsk.
He said troops were still present on the outskirts, after Russia claimed the fay before that it had full control the town.
