TOKYO — Russian President Vladimir Putin visited the far-eastern Kuril islands for the first time on Thursday, prompting a “strong” protest by Japan which also claims the territory.Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi has criticized Putin’s visit to the disputed Kuril islands as “absolutely unacceptable”.Russian state media reported that Putin visited Iturup, known in Japan as Etorofu, one of four islands in the Kuril chain that are claimed by Russia and Japan, on Thursday.Russian-Japanese relations have long been dogged by tensions over the contested islands, known in Japan as the Northern Territories and seized by the Soviet Union in 1945.The Kremlin posted a video of Putin in the Kuril Islands, with Russian media saying he visited a fish-processing plant where he was given caviar. Putin traveled to the Kurils after visiting the nearby Russian island of Sakhalin, where Russia’s navy was conducting drills.In Sakhalin, Putin held a meeting “on ensuring the security of Russia’s eastern borders,” state-run media outlet RIA Novosti said.Putin’s trip “has worsened Japanese sentiment toward Russia,” Takaichi told reporters, maintaining the island chain was “a unique territory of [Japan] historically and under international law”.The countries have been locked in a dispute over the Kurils for decades, and it is the main reason Moscow and Tokyo did not sign a peace treaty after World War Two.The Kuril islands sit between Hokkaido in northern Japan and Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula. Four of the southernmost islands are claimed by Japan, which calls them the Northern Territories.They are administered by Russia. At the end of World War Two, the Soviet Union annexed the island chain and deported around 17,000 Japanese residents.Speaking from the prime minister’s office on Thursday, Takaichi said his trip “wounds the feelings of the Japanese people” and is “incompatible with Japan’s consistent position on the Northern Territories”.”I hope that the Russian side will take the gravity of this matter very seriously,” she said.Japan’s foreign minister Toshimitsu Motegi said the islands were “inherently Japanese territory both historically and under international law, and the Government of Japan strongly protests this visit”.Over the years, attempts to resolve the territorial dispute have made little progress. Bilateral ties have also remained frosty, with Japan imposing sanctions against Russia for its invasion of Ukraine in 2022.Japan has protested against previous visits by Russian officials to the disputed islands.The Kuril islands are a strategic area for Russia, which has beefed up its military presence on the islands over the past decade. The island of Iturup is used as its primary military air base in the region.Last month, Chinese and Russian naval warships sailed through a strait in the Kuril islands during a joint patrol.Russia also holds regular military drills near the islands, drawing condemnation from Japan.Their population of about 20,000 Russian citizens live in harsh climates, but the islands have mineral deposits including gold and silver, and rich fishing grounds.In 2010 then-president Dmitry Medvedev became the first Russian leader to visit the disputed territory. Medvedev also went there several times subsequently as prime minister under Putin’s presidency.On several occasions it appeared that off-and-on talks between Tokyo and Moscow were making progress and in 1956, when diplomatic relations were established, where Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev suggested two of the disputed islands might be returned under a peace treaty.Although the talks resumed after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, no progress has been made and they remain in Russian control.
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