Putin says he will visit islands at centre of Russia’s territorial dispute with Japan
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Russian President Vladimir Putin said tourism should be developed on the disputed islands.
PHOTO: AFP
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MOSCOW – Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that he will definitely one day visit the Southern Kuril Islands, which are at the centre of a dispute with Japan that has lasted since World War II.
The islands are known by Japan as the Northern Territories.
Soviet troops seized the four islands off Japan’s Hokkaido at the end of World War II, and they have remained in Moscow’s hands, preventing the two countries from signing a peace treaty.
At a meeting in the Russian Far Eastern city of Khabarovsk on Jan 11, Mr Putin was asked about Kunashir Island, which is one of the islands in the disputed territory.
Mr Putin said that tourism should be developed on the islands.
“They say it is very interesting there,” Mr Putin said, according to a Kremlin transcript. “I have never once been there, unfortunately – I will definitely go there.”
Located in the north-western Pacific Ocean, the disputed islands stretch for 1,250km from the southern tip of Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula southwards to the Japanese island of Hokkaido.
They form a neat boundary between the Sea of Okhotsk to the west and the Pacific Ocean to the east. REUTERS
