Japan’s supply of Patriot air defense systems to Ukraine will have “serious consequences” for Russian-Japanese relations, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Wednesday, as quoted by Reuters.

Relations between Moscow and Tokyo, already difficult, deteriorated sharply after Russia sent tens of thousands of troops to Ukraine in February 2022. Japan has joined its Western allies in imposing harsh economic sanctions against Russia, Agerpres reports.

Japan said last week it would prepare to ship Patriot air defense missiles to the United States after revising its arms export guidelines, Tokyo’s first major review of such export restrictions in nine years.

While Japan’s new export controls still prevent it from sending weapons to countries at war, the shipment could indirectly benefit Ukraine in its war with Russia, while giving the United States an additional opportunity to provide military aid to Kiev, Reuters noted.

“The Japanese side is losing control over weapons with which Washington can now do whatever it wants,” Zakharova said at the weekly briefing.

Such a scenario would be “interpreted as clearly hostile actions against Russia and lead to serious consequences for Japan in the context of bilateral relations,” she said.

Earlier this month, Japan and South Korea sent planes to monitor joint flights of Chinese and Russian bombers and fighter jets near their territories.

Russia and Japan have yet to sign a treaty ending World War II hostilities over a long-standing territorial dispute over a chain of Pacific islands known in Japan as the Northern Territories and in Russia as the Kuril Islands. South.

Even before the conflict in Ukraine, Tokyo complained about the increase in Russian military deployment on these islands, which the Soviet Union captured from Japan at the end of World War II.