Putin Visits Disputed Kuril Island, Drawing Sharp Protest From Japan

Kuril Island (GNP): Russian President Vladimir Putin visited Iturup, one of the disputed Kuril Islands claimed by Japan, on Thursday, prompting a strong condemnation from Tokyo, which said the move had made improving bilateral relations more difficult.

The island, known in Japan as Etorofu, is one of four in the Kuril chain seized by Moscow in the days following Japan’s surrender at the end of World War Two, a chain Tokyo has long claimed as its own and whose return remains a precondition for concluding a formal peace treaty between the two countries.

Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi criticized the visit in a televised statement, calling it “absolutely unacceptable” and stating that it had wounded the feelings of the Japanese people while running counter to Japan’s consistent position on what it refers to as the Northern Territories.

She said she hoped Russia would take the seriousness of the matter fully to heart. Japan’s Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi separately protested the visit, asserting that the islands are inherently Japanese territory both historically and under international law, and that the government of Japan strongly objected to the trip.

The Kuril Islands sit between Japan’s northern island of Hokkaido and Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula, with the four southernmost islands claimed by Japan but administered by Russia since the Soviet Union annexed the chain at the end of World War Two, a process that included the deportation of roughly 17,000 Japanese residents.

The territorial dispute remains the central obstacle preventing Moscow and Tokyo from signing a formal peace treaty more than eight decades after the war’s end, and relations between the two countries have deteriorated further since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, after which Japan joined other nations in imposing sanctions on Moscow.

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According to Russian state media, the visit marked Putin’s first in-person trip to the island chain, arriving after he oversaw Russian naval exercises in the country’s Far East. State television footage showed him touring the Yasny fish-processing plant on the island, inspecting tuna and halibut on display, and sampling local fish roe while speaking with residents about fishing and marine life.

He was also shown remarking positively on the island’s weather while addressing a group of locals. The Kuril Islands hold considerable strategic significance for Russia, which has expanded its military presence there over the past decade, with Iturup serving as its primary military air base in the region.

The visit came two days before Japan marks 81 years since its surrender ended World War Two, and a day after North Korea fired a missile into waters separating it from Japan, ahead of planned joint military exercises between the United States and South Korea.

On the same day as Putin’s visit, the Russian and Chinese ambassadors to Japan issued a joint statement pledging to oppose attempts to revise the outcomes of World War Two and warning against remilitarization in the Asia-Pacific region, language that aligned with Moscow’s continued rejection of Japan’s territorial claims.

Japan has previously protested similar visits by senior Russian officials, including former Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin and former President Dmitry Medvedev, who in 2010 became the first Russian leader to visit the disputed territory.