As elderly proponents of close ties with Moscow leave the stage, it’s unlikely there will be anyone to fill their shoes.

Tokyo’s tough response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine stems at least partly from fear over what conclusions Japan’s other authoritarian and anti-Western neighbor—China—might draw from the war.

If Japan’s quiet military revolution is indeed aimed against a specific threat, then that threat issues not from Russia but from China.

The purchase of a stake in Arctic LNG 2 by a Japanese consortium is certainly a significant step in the development of economic ties between Russia and Japan, but if the Russian government doesn’t quickly begin work on improving the country’s investment climate, this deal will not be the start of a torrent of Japanese investment, but rather a small island of success in a vast sea of missed opportunities.

In theory, the seizure of a greater share of Sakhalin’s resource wealth by the federal authorities could lead to a fairer distribution of wealth throughout the Russian Far East. The fear, however, is that further centralization of budgetary revenues will merely encourage the pursuit of vanity projects that will not come to fruition for over a decade, if ever.