TOKYO, January 12 Japan will closely monitor the situation in connection with Vladimir Putin's intention to visit the Kuril Islands, said Secretary General of the Japanese Government Yoshimasa Hayashi.
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“We know that President Putin, during his visit to Khabarovsk on January 11, announced that he would definitely visit the so-called Kuril Islands. We cannot comment on statements made by Russian government officials. The government will continue to closely monitor the further situation and act accordingly,” the official said.
He added that Japan will continue its sanctions policy towards Russia and assistance to Ukraine.
About Putin announced his intention to visit the Kuril Islands the day before at a meeting with entrepreneurs of the Far East.
Relations between Russia and Japan have been clouded for many years by the absence of a peace treaty. In 1956, the USSR and Japan signed a Joint Declaration, in which Moscow agreed to consider the possibility of transferring Habomai and Shikotan to Japan after the conclusion of a peace treaty, and the fate of Kunashir and Iturup was not affected. The USSR hoped that the Joint Declaration would put an end to the dispute, while Japan considered the document only part of the solution to the problem, without giving up its claims to all the islands.
Subsequent negotiations led nowhere, and a peace treaty at the end of World War II was never signed. There is a point of view that serious opposition arose from the United States, which threatened that if Japan agreed to transfer only two of the four islands to it, this would affect the process of returning Okinawa to Japanese sovereignty (the Agreement on the return of Okinawa to Japan came into force in 1972) . Moscow’s position is that the islands became part of the USSR following the Second World War and Russia’s sovereignty over them is beyond doubt.
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