Putin visits Japan-claimed islands for first time; Tokyo protests

Russian President Vladimir Putin visited Iturup, a Japan-claimed island at the end of the Kuril chain near the island of Hokkaido, Russian media said on Thursday, a day after major naval drills and a missile firing by ally North Korea.

Moscow and Tokyo never signed a formal World War Two peace treaty as the main hurdle was the unresolved territorial dispute over the islands, which Japan calls the Northern Territories.

On the trip, which state news agency TASS described as Putin’s first in person to the island chain, he visited the Yasny fish-processing plant on Iturup, after overseeing the navy drills in Russia’s far east.

Japan’s foreign minister protested against Putin’s visit on X.

“The northern territories, including Etorofu, are Japan’s inherent territory both historically and based on international law,” said Toshimitsu Motegi. “Japan strongly protests this visit.”

Vesti TV channel images showed Putin in a dark suit, standing in a room looking at two large tuna and halibut on a table, as two officials spoke about fishing and the migratory behaviour of fish. He also stopped to try local fish roe.

“What lovely weather you have there, just like a resort!” Putin told a group of Iturup locals. “And we thought you arranged this!” a woman, who appeared to be in her 30s, joked back.

The visit follows Wednesday’s firing of a ballistic missile by ally North Korea, towards waters off the east of the Korean peninsula, days ahead of major joint military exercises by Seoul and Washington long denounced by Pyongyang.

How the Soviet Union seized the Kuril Islands

The four islands at the heart of the dispute – Iturup (Etorofu in Japanese), Kunashir (Kunashiri), Shikotan and the Habomai islets – have been administered by Russia (and previously the Soviet Union) since the final days of World War II, but Japan has never relinquished its claim to them as its “Northern Territories.”

In the mid-19th century, the two empires first formalised a border. The 1855 Treaty of Shimoda drew the line between Iturup and Urup, confirming Japanese control over the southern islands (including those now disputed) while assigning the northern Kurils to Russia; Sakhalin remained undivided. Twenty years later, the 1875 Treaty of St. Petersburg saw Japan cede its claims to the whole of Sakhalin in exchange for sovereignty over the entire Kuril chain.

That arrangement held until the closing stages of World War II. At the Yalta Conference in February 1945, the leaders of the United States, Britain and the Soviet Union secretly agreed that the Kuril Islands would be handed over to the USSR in return for Soviet entry into the war against Japan. On 8–9 August 1945 – three months after Germany’s surrender and shortly after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki – the Soviet Union declared war on Japan and launched a rapid offensive in Manchuria, southern Sakhalin and the Kurils.

Japan announced its acceptance of the Potsdam Declaration and readiness to surrender on 15 August 1945. Formal surrender was signed on 2 September. Nevertheless, Soviet forces continued operations. The invasion of the Kuril Islands ran from 18 August to early September 1945. Troops first secured the northern islands, then landed on the southern ones – including the four Japan claims – between late August and 4–5 September, after Japan’s surrender announcement. Japanese garrisons were disarmed and, in the following years (1946–1949), the approximately 17,000 Japanese residents of the four southern islands were forcibly repatriated.

In February 1946 the Soviet Union formally incorporated the islands into its territory. Japan maintains that the occupation was illegal because it occurred after Japan had ceased hostilities, that the four southern islands were never part of the “Kurils” properly so called, and that they had been under continuous Japanese control since before the first Russo-Japanese treaties. Russia points to the Yalta Agreement and the wartime Allied arrangements as the legal basis for the transfer.

The 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty required Japan to renounce “all right, title and claim to the Kuril Islands,” but the Soviet Union did not sign the treaty, and Tokyo has consistently argued that the four southern islands fall outside the scope of that renunciation. A 1956 Japan–Soviet Joint Declaration ended the formal state of war and provided for the eventual return of Habomai and Shikotan after a full peace treaty, but no such treaty was ever concluded. The territorial issue has remained the principal obstacle to a post-war peace settlement between the two countries ever since.

On the occasion of the same visit to Russia’s far East, Putin has declared that Moscow will respond “mirror-like” (in kind) to the detention of Russian commercial vessels by other countries, including European Union member states.

Putin says Russia will respond “in kind” to seizures of its ships

With Reuters

Caption: Russian President Vladimir Putin (R), accompanied by Pacific Fleet Commander-in-Chief Admiral Viktor Liina (L), visits the Guards missile cruiser Varyag during the final stage of the Pacific Fleet’s exercises off the coast of Sakhalin region, Russia, 12 August 2026. EPA/GAVRIIL GRIGOROV/SPUTNIK/KREMLIN POOL