Tank landing transport ships have been spotted through the Tsugaru Strait that separates the islands of Honshu and Hokkaido. Japan's marine defense service was first spotted off the coast 435 miles from the Russian city of Vladivostok. Some believe that equipment and bodies that were loaded in Kamchatka, where numerous military bases are located, may offload the equipment and soldiers to the Trans-Siberian Railway for shipment to the Ukrainian border.
The ships have passed through the strait into the Sea of Japan on Wednesday.
The four ships can hold tanks, trucks, and hundreds of combat troops.
From Nippon Today-
According to the ministry, a Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force patrol plane spotted two warships, including an Alligator-class landing vessel, navigating in waters some 70 kilometers east-northeast of Cape Shiriyazaki on the Shimokita Peninsula in the northeastern prefecture of Aomori, around 8 p.m. Tuesday (11 a.m. GMT).
Including the two, four ships sailed westward through the Tsugaru Strait into the Sea of Japan by Wednesday.
Russia is short of tanks in Ukraine due to the heroes of Ukraine and the efficiency of western defense systems. Putin has suffered many casualties, injuries, desertions, and soldiers' surrender to the Ukrainians.
From Reuters:
Four Russian warships passed through the Tsugaru Strait in northeastern Japan between Tuesday and Wednesday, possibly transporting troops and combat vehicles to Ukraine, Japan's Defense Ministry said Wednesday.
The Defense Ministry said Thursday that it had spotted four large Russian amphibious warfare ships sailing through a strait in northeastern Japan as they traveled west, possibly toward Europe.
Pictures published by the Defense Ministry of the amphibious transports, typically used for landing expeditionary forces ashore, showed what appeared to be military trucks loaded onto the deck of one of the vessels.
“We don’t know where they are heading, but their heading suggest it is possible” they could be headed for Ukraine, a Defense Ministry spokesman said.
A Self-Defense Forces maritime patrol first detected Tuesday the Russian vessels — which can carry dozens of tanks, other military vehicles and hundreds of troops — and monitored them as they moved west from the Pacific Ocean to the Sea of Japan through the narrow Tsuruga Strait separating Honshu from Hokkaido on Wednesday.
It is unusual for Russian ships to pass through the strait so close to Japanese territory, the spokesman said.
It will likely be a long haul if the ships are heading to Ukraine. Turkey has closed the Bosphorus and Dardanelles straits to warships heading to the Black Sea, adding significant delays to any sea invasion by Vlad the bloody.
Turkey’s denial of passage to warships comes a day after Çavuşoğlu told CNN Turk the Russian invasion into Ukraine is considered a war.
By declaring it a war, Turkey was able to use the rules of the Montreux Convention that allow it to restrict the passage of the straits, although the foreign minister did not cite which article allowed it to shut off access to warships.
The Montreaux Convention gives Turkey wide latitude to control the straits and includes specific restrictions – like tonnage limitations, notification for passage, and time limitations – for non-Black Sea states.
The move by Turkish officials is a “powerful, sensible, and bold” one, former NATO Supreme Allied Commander Adm. James Stavridis told USNI News in an email.
Tokyo (CNN)Japan has backed its condemnation of war in Ukraine with sanctions on Russian officials and oligarchs, but experts say they're not the only audience for Tokyo's outrage -- China is meant to get the message, too.
Since Moscow attacked Ukraine, commentators have drawn comparisons between Russia's actions and China's stated ambition to seek the "reunification" of Taiwan with the mainland.The "what if" scenario has not been lost on Japanese leaders.In the first days of the invasion, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida was quick to frame the Ukraine crisis as a global issue. "This is a very serious situation which doesn't just affect Europe, but also Asia and the whole world order," he told reporters.
Some experts believe that the defiance shown by Russia towards Japan is a stern reminder not to embrace further sanctions. As Rachel would say, watch this space.
UPDATED
Interesting thread in Rob Lee’s and Samuel Ramani Twitter feed.
From Reuters:
TOKYO (Reuters) – Ukraine is asking Japan for high-quality satellite imagery to help it fend off Russian troops, the Nikkei newspaper reported on Thursday.
Japanese governments and private companies operate satellites that have the ability to capture detailed images day and night, and through clouds and other obstructions in the atmosphere.
The Japanese government will carefully consider whether providing such data to Ukraine is politically acceptable or allowed under the current legal framework, the report said without citing sources.
From itzadryheat in the comments:
My theory, based entirely on my own experience as a sailor: the ships are going the wrong direction for deployment to the Black Sea. They’ll never make it in time, and with the Turkish blockade in place, never get near the war zone.
They’re most likely going to Vladivostok to offload the trucks, probably coming from Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky on the Kamchatka Peninsula, where there are army garrisons. They will be loaded there onto train cars for shipment west to the conflict. I’ve seen video of trains from the first week of the war hauling military equipment west on the Trans-Siberian Railway north of Vladivostok at Khabarovsk, so they are stripping the Russian Far East of equipment.