On the evening of August 24, more than two dozen leaders gathered in Kyiv to mark 35 years of Ukrainian independence. One of them was in Tokyo, on a screen, near midnight. Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi used her slot to promise two things: continued aid to Ukraine, and continued sanctions on Russia. Both are true. So is this: Japan currently sits among the five countries that buy the most Russian natural gas anywhere.

A seat at the Kyiv table, by video link

The Coalition of the Willing met on August 24, Ukraine's Independence Day, co-chaired by British Prime Minister Andy Burnham, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz alongside President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Burnham travelled in by train and European Council President António Costa attended in person; most of the rest, Takaichi included, joined by video.

According to FNN Prime Online, she told the meeting that the underlying principle has not changed: attempts to alter the status quo unilaterally by force must not be tolerated. She pointed to Russia's military cooperation with North Korea and its deepening alignment with China. From that she drew the conclusion Japanese diplomats have been drawing for four years: Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific security cannot be pulled apart. Japan would keep working on both aid and sanctions, she said, and its position of standing with Ukraine would not waver.

The co-chairs' statement afterwards was blunter than Tokyo's language usually is. Leaders condemned Russian strikes that have produced the highest civilian casualty numbers since the full-scale invasion began in 2022, including damage the previous week to a children's hospital in Kyiv and to the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra monastery. They put the cumulative damage done to Russia's war chest by sanctions and related measures at a minimum of $495 billion since February 2022. Ukraine went into the meeting asking for at least 300 Patriot interceptors before winter. Zelenskyy said deliveries had halved since 2023, and that the figure projected for 2026 is 264.

Portrait of Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi

Source: Cabinet Public Affairs Office via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0)

"Today's Ukraine may be tomorrow's East Asia"

Why does a country more than 8,000 km away treat this as its own security problem?

The sentence Japanese officials keep reaching for was repeated by Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi in February 2026: today's Ukraine may be tomorrow's East Asia. In the same briefing he put Japan's pledged support at roughly $20 billion. The foreign ministry scopes that figure to humanitarian, financial and reconstruction assistance; the non-lethal equipment Japan has sent, body armour and Self-Defense Force vehicles among it, sits alongside that total rather than inside it.

Japan's postwar rules on defence exports mean it cannot send weapons. When it contributed in May 2026 to NATO's Priority Ukraine Requirements List, the mechanism through which allies fund American equipment for Kyiv, its $14.66 million went specifically to the package containing only non-lethal items. Other members of the coalition pay for interceptors. Japan pays for trucks and demining gear.

The other set of numbers

Russia was Japan's third-largest source of liquefied natural gas in 2025, supplying 8.9% of the 64.98 million tonnes the country imported, behind Australia at 39.7% and Malaysia at 14.8% and ahead of the United States. Almost all of it comes from one project: Sakhalin-2, on Russia's Pacific island, three days' sailing away, owned by Gazprom (77.5%), Mitsui (12.5%) and Mitsubishi (10%).

By value, Japan bought $5.525 billion of Russian goods in 2025, down 3.4% year on year, with LNG alone accounting for $3.342 billion of that, or 60.5%. Exports to Russia went the other way, rising 13.5% to $2.459 billion, the first increase in four years. Of the vehicles in that figure, 186,585 were passenger cars, and every one was second-hand.

The reason this continues is that Washington keeps making room for it. On June 11, 2026 the US Treasury issued General License 55F, extending permission for Sakhalin-2 shipping, insurance and Gazprombank-related transactions, for cargoes bound solely for Japan, through December 18, 2026. It is the latest in a chain of roughly six-month renewals. Japan does apply sanctions elsewhere: in September 2025 it moved with partners to cut the price cap on Russian crude from $60 to $47.60 a barrel.

Japanese utilities make a practical case for staying. The Sakhalin contracts are long-term and carry take-or-pay clauses, so walking away means paying for cargoes you never receive while Russia resells them elsewhere. Australian and Southeast Asian fields are maturing. And a three-day voyage is an asset when Middle East shipping routes are disrupted, as they have been since early 2026.

The Lunskoye-A offshore platform of the Sakhalin-2 project off Sakhalin Island

Source: Russian.dissident via Wikimedia Commons (CC0)

Washington, Brussels and everyone else

The EU has adopted twenty sanctions packages, the most recent on April 23, 2026, and has legislated its own exit from Russian gas. Short-term LNG contracts ended on April 25, 2026; long-term ones expire on January 1, 2027, and from that date EU operators may not provide LNG terminal services to Russian-linked entities at all. Brussels also approved a €90 billion loan for Ukraine. Europe has given itself a deadline. Japan has not.

The United States is in a stranger position: an administration that has preferred tariffs to sanctions, and a Congress pushing from the other direction. On August 7 the Senate passed the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026 by 86 votes to 11, authorising tariffs as high as 100% on whichever five countries buy the most Russian crude, and whichever five buy the most Russian gas. According to Senate aides the crude list runs China, India, Slovakia, Hungary, Azerbaijan. The gas list runs China, France, Japan, Hungary, Belgium. Japan is expected to be carved out, since countries taking under 15% of Russia's total gas exports and demonstrably reducing are exempt. But as of late August the bill has yet to clear the House, and the definitions are left to the US Trade Representative. Being on a list and then exempted from it is not the same as never being on it.

The Global South has mostly declined the framework altogether. When Washington canvassed Latin America, Africa and Asia for support in 2022, Foreign Policy counted a single government that signed on: Singapore. BRICS governments have argued for years that unilateral sanctions sit badly with the UN Charter; Turkey observes UN decisions rather than national ones. Trade follows politics. In July 2026 China alone accounted for 43% of Russia's fossil-fuel export revenue from its top five buyers, worth €7.7 billion; India took another €6.4 billion, 87% of it crude.

Read across that spread, Japan is neither Europe nor India. It sanctions like a G7 member and buys like an Asian importer.

Eleven days before the summit, Putin stood on Etorofu

On August 13, Russian state media reported that Vladimir Putin had visited Etorofu, the largest of the four islands Japan calls the Northern Territories and Russia administers as part of the Kurils. It was his first visit there. He toured a fish processing plant and remarked on the fine weather. Takaichi protested in the strongest terms, calling the visit incompatible with Japan's consistent position and absolutely unacceptable, and said it had made any medium-term repair of relations harder. Moscow rejected the protest outright.

The timing was awkward, because Tokyo had been reaching in the other direction without saying much about it. With Middle East supply disrupted, the Takaichi government has been hunting for alternative barrels, and economy ministry officials travelled to Russia in late May, officially to discuss protecting Japanese companies' assets. Chief Cabinet Secretary Minoru Kihara condemned Russian strikes on Kyiv as an outrage and, in the same appearance, called Russia a neighbour with whom ties should be appropriately maintained. Jiji Press described the government's July posture as visible accommodation.

None of this is unique to Japan. Hungary and Slovakia still take Russian crude, France and Belgium still handle Russian LNG under long-term contracts that expire in January 2027, and India bought record volumes this summer before pulling back in August. What is particular to Japan is the pairing: it argued the principle at a table where, eleven days earlier, its own territorial dispute with Russia had been tested on the ground, while depending on Russia for close to a tenth of its gas.

Every government backing Ukraine has drawn a line somewhere between principle and supply, and almost none has drawn it cleanly. Where has your country drawn its line, and has anyone there actually had to defend it in public?

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