Why did Vladimir Putin’s historic Kuril Islands trip spark a fierce Russia-Japan showdown?
Russian President Vladimir Putin made his first visit to the Kuril Islands, travelling to Iturup (Etorofu), one of the four southern islands claimed by both Russia and Japan.
During the visit, Putin toured civilian facilities including a fish processing plant, a hospital, and a school on the island.
The Japanese government issued a formal protest, with its Prime Minister and Foreign Minister both characterising the visit as unacceptable and reaffirming Japan's territorial claim to the islands.
The visit adds to unresolved tensions between Russia and Japan, which have never signed a formal peace treaty ending the Second World War, largely because of this territorial dispute.
The Kuril Islands / Northern Territories Dispute
The dispute concerns four islands — Iturup (Etorofu), Kunashir (Kunashiri), Shikotan, and the Habomai group — at the southern end of the Kuril chain between Japan's Hokkaido and Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula. Japan calls them the "Northern Territories" and asserts they were never part of the Kuril Islands it renounced after World War II; Russia (as the USSR's successor) has administered them since 1945 and disputes that distinction.
Key Details
- The islands came under Soviet control per the secret Yalta Agreement of February 1945, under which the USSR agreed to enter the Pacific War against Japan in exchange for the Kuril Islands and southern Sakhalin.
- Japan formally renounced "all right, title and claim to the Kuril Islands" under Article 2(c) of the San Francisco Peace Treaty (1951) — but the USSR never signed that treaty, and Japan maintains the four disputed islands were historically distinct from the "Kuril Islands" it renounced.
- The dispute has prevented Russia and Japan from signing a formal peace treaty to date, more than 80 years after WWII ended.
Putin's visit — his first to the islands as president — is read as a symbolic assertion of Russian sovereignty precisely over the territory Japan disputes, deepening the impasse that has blocked a bilateral peace treaty for eight decades.
Soviet-Japanese Joint Declaration, 1956
Signed in Moscow on 19 October 1956, this declaration formally ended the state of war between the USSR and Japan and restored diplomatic relations, while leaving the territorial question for a future peace treaty.
Key Details
- Article 9 of the Declaration recorded Soviet willingness to hand over Shikotan and the Habomai islets to Japan as a goodwill gesture — but only after a full peace treaty was concluded.
- Following Japan's 1960 security treaty with the United States, the Soviet Union revoked this commitment, linking any handover to the withdrawal of foreign (US) forces from Japanese soil.
- No peace treaty has been concluded since, and post-Soviet Russia has periodically revisited but never implemented the two-island handover formula.
The 1956 Declaration remains the only bilateral instrument in which Moscow has ever agreed, even conditionally, to cede any of the disputed islands — a benchmark Japan continues to invoke diplomatically each time tensions resurface, as with this visit.
Strategic and Economic Significance of the Kuril Chain
The Kuril Islands form a natural barrier separating the Sea of Okhotsk from the Pacific Ocean, and control of key straits within the chain (along with the La Perouse Strait between Hokkaido and Sakhalin) affects naval access for Russia's Pacific Fleet.
Key Details
- The islands sit near Sakhalin, where India's ONGC Videsh holds an equity stake in the Sakhalin-1 offshore oil and gas project — giving India a tangential economic interest in regional stability.
- The area is rich in fisheries and has been explored for offshore hydrocarbon and rare-earth mineral potential, adding an economic dimension to the sovereignty dispute.
- Control of the southern Kuril straits affects unrestricted access for the Russian Pacific Fleet between the Sea of Okhotsk and the open Pacific.
Beyond symbolism, Russia's assertion of control over the islands secures both a strategic naval chokepoint and adjoining maritime economic zones, which is part of why Japan has responded to the visit with unusually strong language.
- Disputed islands: Iturup, Kunashir, Shikotan, and the Habomai group — Japan's "Northern Territories."
- Yalta Agreement: February 1945, secret protocol, publicly disclosed only in 1947.
- San Francisco Peace Treaty: signed 8 September 1951, entered into force 28 April 1952; USSR did not sign it.
- Soviet-Japanese Joint Declaration: signed 19 October 1956, restored diplomatic relations but left the peace treaty (and territorial question) unresolved.
- No Russia-Japan peace treaty has been signed as of 2026, over 80 years after WWII.
- India holds equity interest (via ONGC Videsh) in the nearby Sakhalin-1 project, linking India indirectly to the region's stability.