Russia Rejects Japan's Demand to Remove Khabarovsk WWII Victory Monument

Russian officials have turned down Japan's demand to dismantle a newly unveiled monument in the far eastern city of Khabarovsk that commemorates the Soviet victory over militarist Japan in World War II, stating that the statue will remain in place.

The 15-metre-tall monument was unveiled on September 4 and depicts a Soviet soldier shattering an imperial-era border stone marked with the chrysanthemum emblem, a symbol associated with the Japanese emperor.

A day after the ceremony, Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi called for the statue's removal, describing the chrysanthemum crest as a widely recognised symbol of Japan and arguing that a monument showing its destruction is unacceptable.

Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov responded on Tuesday by criticising Tokyo for overlooking its historical record. He said it was hard to tell what Japan had forgotten or remembered, but added that Russia had not forgotten Japanese militarism or the victory achieved over it.

At a press briefing on Wednesday, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that under the same emblem, militarist Japan committed grave crimes against other Asian countries and Russia, including the Nanjing Massacre of 1937-1938. She noted that Japan has never undertaken anything comparable to Germany's denazification process, while its political elites continue to visit and pay respects at the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo, where war criminals convicted by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East are honoured. Such visits, she said, are seen by neighbouring countries as a refusal to acknowledge wartime atrocities.

Zakharova added that Japan's demands over the Khabarovsk monument amount to an infringement of Russian sovereignty and another attempt to mislead the international community and rewrite the history of Japanese militarism.