MOSCOW. Dec 27 (Interfax) - Moscow said that the visit Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe paid to the Yasukuni shrine, which among other things honors World War II war criminals, was regrettable.
"Amid enhanced attempts of certain powers to impose onto Japanese society one sided assessments, different from the commonly accepted ones regarding the results of World War II, such actions, like those of the Japanese prime minister can not cause anything but regret," Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said in a statement on Thursday.
"Official Tokyo is well aware of how painfully the mentioned visit to the shrine is taken by people affected by Japanese aggression during World War II," Lukashevich said.
"We are certain that the right understanding of the historical past is an important basis of contemporary relations of Tokyo with neighboring countries, which fought against the Japanese militarism during the war years," the spokesman said.