The Ministry of Defense of Japan said in these hours that a Russian military helicopter violated Japanese airspace. According to government sources, some fighter planes of the Japanese Air Self-Defense Force took off immediately and intercepted the Moscow aircraft, escorting it out of Tokyo's airspace.

The fact would have happened off the Nemuro peninsula, in the Hokkaido region, located in the northernmost part of Japan, a few days after the beginning of a Russian military exercise in the Sea of Okhotsk. Tokyo has strongly protested with Moscow through a message of the Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida delivered through diplomatic channels. To date it would not seem a military provocation linked to the ongoing conflict in Ukraine.