Russia is not happy with Japan's statements regarding the anniversary of the US military's dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima at the end of WWII. Thursday marks the 81st anniversary of the bombing which obliterated the densely-populated industrial city.
The Kremlin is accusing Japanese officials of intentionally dropping any mention of just who dropped the nuke which ultimately killed some 140,000 people, the vast majority of them civilians.
The city's mayor Kazumi Matsui at a ceremony held at the center of where the blast happened issued strong condemnation of nuclear weapons generally, but failed to identify that it was the United States behind it.
Tokyo and Washington have in recent years deepened their security ties, with an eye on China, and so Japanese leaders have long sought to avoid offending their powerful patron and ally.
Astoundingly, not only did Mayor Matsui fail to mention the US and the B-29 Superfortress 'Enola Gay' bomber that actually dropped the bomb, a simple historical reality, but he went out of his way to condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine in his Thursday speech.
The speech focused on the "inhumanity of nuclear weapons" and how "use of force to pursue one's own prosperity" must be condemned and abolished, but then he gratuitously invoked Russia while giving the stories of survivors who have since suffered debilitating illnesses:
Another woman, exposed to the bomb at age 3, suffered through the years from a series of illnesses, then leukemia at age
