Sakhalin - Russian President Vladimir Putin has visited Etorofu Island, marking his first trip to the Russian-held islands claimed by Japan as the Northern Territories, according to the Kremlin.
Russian state media said Putin inspected facilities on the island, including a seafood processing plant.
Putin traveled to Russia's Far Eastern Sakhalin region on August 12 to observe exercises by the Russian Navy's Pacific Fleet.
During a meeting with senior fleet officials, Putin referred to the Northern Territories as islands over which "Japan claims sovereignty," while arguing that Russian control was established as a result of World War II and was "enshrined in international documents as a postwar reality."
Putin also said Japan had for the first time identified Russia as one of its principal threats in its latest military doctrine, while adding that "Russia is not threatening Japan."
The visit draws renewed attention to a territorial dispute that has remained unresolved for more than eight decades and has prevented Japan and Russia from concluding a formal peace treaty following World War II.
Japan refers to the four disputed areas as the Northern Territories: Etorofu, Kunashiri and Shikotan islands, along with the Habomai group of smaller islands northeast of Hokkaido. Russia administers them as part of its Kuril Islands territory. Japan maintains that the four islands are inherent Japanese territory and are separate from the Kuril Islands that Japan renounced after World War II.
The territorial question predates World War II. Japan and Imperial Russia signed the Treaty of Shimoda in 1855, establishing their border between Etorofu and Uruppu, known in Russian as Urup. Under that arrangement, Etorofu was on the Japanese side of the boundary, while the islands extending north from Uruppu were Russian territory. Japan cites the treaty as one of the historical foundations for its claim to the four islands.
The territorial arrangement changed again under the 1875 Treaty of St. Petersburg, in which Japan gave up its claims to Sakhalin in exchange for sovereignty over the Kuril island chain north of Uruppu. Japan argues that this distinction between the Kurils acquired in 1875 and Etorofu, Kunashiri, Shikotan and Habomai is important to the present dispute because the four territories were already treated as Japanese before the 1875 exchange.
The modern dispute emerged in the closing days of World War II. The Soviet Union declared war on Japan in August 1945 and Soviet forces subsequently occupied the Kuril chain and the four islands now claimed by Japan. The territories have remained under Soviet and later Russian administration since then.
Most Japanese residents who had been living on the islands before the Soviet takeover were subsequently removed, leaving the territories under Soviet control as relations between Tokyo and Moscow entered the Cold War era.
The 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty became a central point of disagreement over the islands' legal status. Japan renounced its claims to the Kuril Islands under the treaty, but Tokyo maintains that Etorofu, Kunashiri, Shikotan and Habomai were not part of the Kuril Islands covered by that renunciation. Moscow rejects Japan's interpretation and regards the outcome of World War II as having established Russian sovereignty over the territory.
The Soviet Union did not sign the San Francisco treaty, leaving Tokyo and Moscow to negotiate separately over normalization of their relations.
Those negotiations produced the Japan-Soviet Joint Declaration of October 19, 1956, which formally ended the state of war between the two countries and restored diplomatic relations. The declaration did not settle the sovereignty dispute over all four islands.
Under the declaration, the Soviet Union agreed that the Habomai islands and Shikotan would be handed over to Japan after the conclusion of a peace treaty. Japan, however, continued to seek a settlement covering Kunashiri and Etorofu as well, and the two countries were unable to agree on a final peace treaty.
The issue became more complicated after Japan and the United States revised their security treaty in 1960. The Soviet Union subsequently linked the transfer of Habomai and Shikotan to the withdrawal of foreign forces from Japan, a condition Tokyo rejected as a unilateral alteration of the 1956 agreement.
For much of the Cold War, negotiations made little progress. The dispute returned to the diplomatic agenda as the Soviet Union weakened and eventually collapsed in 1991, with post-Soviet Russia acknowledging that a territorial question remained between the two countries.
Successive Japanese and Russian leaders attempted to find a compromise. In the 1993 Tokyo Declaration, Japan and Russia identified Etorofu, Kunashiri, Shikotan and Habomai as the territories whose attribution needed to be resolved before the conclusion of a peace treaty.
Putin himself later confirmed the continuing validity of the 1956 Japan-Soviet Joint Declaration. During negotiations in the early 2000s, the declaration was treated as a basic legal document for further peace treaty talks.
Another attempt to revive negotiations came in 2018, when Japan and Russia agreed to accelerate peace treaty negotiations on the basis of the 1956 declaration. The framework raised the possibility that Habomai and Shikotan could become the focus of a compromise, although fundamental differences over sovereignty remained.
Relations later deteriorated sharply following Russia's invasion of Ukraine and Japan's participation in sanctions against Moscow. The broader decline in bilateral ties further reduced prospects for progress on the territorial issue.
The four islands are also strategically significant because they lie between Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula and Japan's northern island of Hokkaido and form part of the maritime approaches used by Russia's Pacific Fleet. Japan has repeatedly expressed concern about Russian military activity and the strengthening of military infrastructure in and around the disputed island chain.
Etorofu is the largest of the four disputed territories and lies northeast of Hokkaido. Putin's visit carries particular symbolic weight because no Russian or Soviet leader had previously made an in-person visit to the Japan-claimed islands, according to Russian state media.
Despite decades of negotiations, the fundamental positions of Tokyo and Moscow remain far apart. Japan continues to claim sovereignty over all four Northern Territories, while Russia considers its control of the islands a legitimate outcome of World War II.
The unresolved dispute means that more than 80 years after the end of World War II, Japan and Russia have still not concluded a formal peace treaty.
Source: TBS
