"Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is ready to visit Russia and the Japanese leader's visit may be carried out not in Moscow, but in one of [Russian] regions," Ushakov told the Izvestia newspaper on Monday.
The Russian official added that Abe proposed a visit to Russia during a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of the November 2015 G20 summit in Antalya, Turkey.
Putin was due to travel to Japan in the fall of 2014, but the crisis in Ukraine and Moscow’s strained relations with the West caused the trip to be postponed. A visit was then planned for 2015, but the two sides never announced a set date.
The relations between two countries deteriorated after Tokyo announced support for certain Western economic sanctions against Russia imposed in 2014 over an alleged Moscow's interference in the armed conflict in eastern Ukraine. The Kremlin has repeatedly denied the claims.
