On July 8, Japan’s former prime minister, Shinzo Abe, died after being shot at a campaign event in the city of Nara.
The alleged killer, 41-year-old Tetsuya Yamagami, was taken into police custody after reportedly shooting Abe with a homemade gun.
Yamagami told the police he did not hold a “political grudge” against Abe, but was rather motivated by grievances against a religious group he alleged Abe was connected to, Japan’s Asahi Shimbun newspaper reported.
But on Russian state TV, sinologist Nikolai Vavilov declared that the United States was behind Abe’s assassination. Vavilov provided no evidence to support his conspiracy theory, but claimed that in the East, “political assassinations are usually political suicides” carried out through some form of “self-immolation.” He said people do not express their political positions by killing others.
He speculated that Abe was killed because Japan did not want to become a base for “war against China” and for “Taiwan operations,” adding the United States is “putting maximum pressure on the Japanese government.”
“What is happening now is a political assassination, sewn with white thread, actually carried out by the hands of the Americans, to show, most importantly, to other leaders, who is next,” Vavilov said on 60 Minutes, the Rossiya 1 channel’s prime time talk show.
That claim is false.
The alleged killer’s grudge was reportedly personal in nature. Neither Yamagami nor his motives had any U.S. connection. Politically, Abe’s...
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