(Reuters) -One of the Kremlin’s most senior hawks, Nikolai Patrushev, hopes that Japan will stop pursuing a policy of militarisation toward Russia and China, he said in remarks published on Tuesday, voicing concerns that NATO could use its fleet in combat.
A former KGB officer and a Cold War warrior who crafted the Kremlin’s national security strategy, Patrushev said, without providing evidence, that NATO intends to use the Japanese fleet to conduct combat operations in parts of the world.
“One would like to believe that common sense will prevail among the Japanese elites, and they will stop pursuing a suicidal policy of militarisation and rattling weapons at two of the most powerful neighbouring states — Russia and China,” he told news outlet Argumenty I Fakty.
“But as long as this continues, we certainly cannot sit idly by.”
The remarks come as Russian President Vladimir Putin makes a rare four-day trip to China to attend a military parade on Tiananmen Square on Wednesday marking the end of World War Two after Japan’s formal surrender.
Ahead of the massive public display of China’s modernising armed forces, Beijing has mounted a campaign saying that China and the former Soviet Union played a pivotal role in the Asian and European theatres during World War Two.
Ties between China and Russia serve as a “source of stability for world peace”, President Xi Jinping said last week.
Russia and Japan never signed a formal World War II peace treaty, with the main obstacle being an unresolved territorial dispute over the Kuril Islands, known in Japan as the Northern Territories.
“The Japanese Navy closely cooperates with the NATO fleet; at any moment, they can be integrated into Western coalition formats,” Patrushev said.
(Writing by Lidia Kelly in Melbourne; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)
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