Former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was assassinated during his speech on July 8, and is now in a state of "cardiac and lung arrest" (clinical death, which in Japan can only be confirmed by an authorized doctor). It is reported by Kyodo, NHK.
Kyodo claims that Abe "does not show signs of life."
According to the NHK television channel, eyewitnesses spoke of at least two shots during Abe's speech. Local television filmed the moment of the assassination, the video was published online.
The attacker was detained: he turned out to be 41-year-old local resident Tetsuya Yamagami, a former sailor of the Japan Self-Defense Forces. NHK claims that the gunman was unhappy with Abe's policies and wanted to kill him. Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, who took part in the election campaign, has canceled all speeches and is returning to Tokyo.
Abe was the 57th and 63rd Prime Minister of Japan from 2006–2007 and 2012–2020. He served in this position the longest in the history of the country. In 2016, Abe proposed an eight-point plan to strengthen relations between Russia and Japan in the fields of energy, small and medium-sized businesses, industrialization of the Far East, expansion of the export base, strengthening cooperation in the field of advanced technologies, including nuclear energy, as well as in the field of humanitarian exchanges. . However, after the start of the war in Ukraine, Japan adopted several packages of sanctions against the Russian Federation. Russian Ambassador to Japan Mikhail Galuzin argued that the Japanese government "essentially nullified" the efforts to develop cooperation undertaken in previous years thanks to the implementation of the agreements between Putin and Abe.