Tokyo says Russian fighter jets breached Japan airspace

Two Russian fighter jets violated Japanese airspace on Thursday, as Tokyo scrambled jets to chase off the planes, the defence ministry said.

The Russian planes were detected off the coast of northernmost Hokkaido island for just over a minute, shortly after Japan's new prime minister said he wants to find a "mutually acceptable solution" to a decades-old territorial row with Russia and sign a long-delayed peace treaty with Moscow.