TAIPEI, Sept 11 (Reuters) – In a small meeting room in a downtown Taipei office building, Russian officials hosted an unusual screening of an old Soviet documentary called “Smashing Militarist Japan” for some 20 Taiwanese guests.
Despite the small audience, the screening of the 81-year-old film has alarmed Taiwan’s government. Russia, it believes, is helping China push its narrative of a rising military threat from Japan, and is seeking to sow discord over Taipei’s relations with Tokyo and other Western partners.
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last year suggested a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan could trigger a Japanese military response, causing a diplomatic crisis between Tokyo and Beijing and prompting repeated warnings from Beijing that Japan is seeking a return to its aggressive past.
Officials in Taiwan say they believe the closed-door screening last week of the film by the de facto Russian embassy in Taipei is part of a new effort to spread and bolster China’s “new militarism” line against Japan, a key though unofficial ally of Taipei.
Russia’s foreign ministry did not respond to a request for comment. China’s foreign ministry said it was unaware of the screening of the old Soviet-era film.
It added that Allied powers, including China, Russia and the U.S., had defeated Japanese militarism, and that “upholding and promoting a correct historical view of World War Two is the shared responsibility of the international community”.
‘SMASHING MILITARIST JAPAN’
The film shown was 1945’s black-and-white “The Defeat of Militarist Japan”, which the Russian office translated into Chinese on Facebook as “Smashing Militarist Japan”.
The film, available on YouTube under the name “The defeat of Japan”, shows images of the Soviet attack on Japanese-occupied Manchuria and the Kuril Islands. A voiceover denounces the “robber philosophy of the divine superiority of the Japanese race” and shows footage of Japanese atrocities against Chinese civilians.
The showing of the film sits in a sensitive area for Taiwan: freedom of speech is constitutionally protected, but it also has laws, including the 2019 Anti-Infiltration Act, aimed at preventing hostile foreign forces — chiefly China — from covertly influencing its politics.
There was no police presence outside the screening and no effort was made to shut it down.
Taiwan’s National Security Council, its highest government body overseeing security and counter-intelligence, told Reuters it was “closely monitoring” Chinese-Russian military and “cognitive warfare” cooperation when asked about the screening.
“The two countries are attempting to amplify specific topics and distort historical facts and political issues,” it said.
Taiwanese officials said Russia posed a new challenge because Moscow could approach some Taiwan contacts with less immediate legal scrutiny than if Chinese officials were to do so, as their activities are subject to Taiwan’s security laws.
Taiwan’s foreign ministry told Reuters that around 20 people from the “academic world” had been invited to the screening.
While Taiwan respects the “lawful conduct of normal exchanges”, activities held by the Russian office “should also respect historical facts and conform to universal values such as democracy and freedom”, the ministry added.
INVITATION ONLY EVENT
Staff from the Russian office, including the deputy representative, Sergey Chudodeev, declined entry to Reuters reporters, saying it was an invitation-only event.
After the screening, the Russian representative, Pavel Lapin, said Moscow’s Taipei office hoped to organise similar events in the future, a person who attended the event said.
“The Soviet Union and the Chinese people endured the heaviest casualties in that war. The contributions they made toward crushing German fascism and Japanese militarism are indisputable and cannot be diminished,” the Russian office said in a Facebook post about the screening.
A person who attended said those present included former journalists, business figures, academics and other public-facing figures.
In August, China and Russia issued a joint statement warning against remilitarisation in the Asia-Pacific.
Russian diplomats in Taipei have generally kept a very low profile since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, according to diplomatic sources.
The Russian office in Taipei opened in 1996, and it has always had a more understated presence in Taiwan compared with the de facto embassies of countries like the United States, European Union and Britain, diplomatic sources say.
‘PLOY’
China’s Taiwan Affairs Office dismissed Taiwan’s concerns about the film as “another ploy to manipulate anti-China sentiment for political gain”.
Taiwan has been on Russia’s “unfriendly” countries and territories list since it joined other Western allies in sanctioning the country following its invasion of Ukraine, and senior Russian officials have openly backed China’s claims to the democratically-governed island.
Moscow and Tokyo have their own long-running dispute over Russia’s seizing four Kuril Islands off northern Japan at the end of World War Two, one of which Russian President Vladimir Putin visited last month, drawing condemnation from Tokyo.
(Reporting by Reuters bureau; Editing by Michael Perry)
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