Tokyo expects Putin to sign a peace treaty with Japan – RBC

«We would like to conclude a peace treaty by solving the territorial issue – and for this we would like to see President Putin arrived in Japan. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is thinking very seriously about it, “- quoted by Interfax news agency deputy chairman of the Liberal Democratic Party of Japan, former Foreign Minister Masahiko Komura after meeting a meeting with State Duma Speaker Sergei Naryshkin in Tokyo.

At the end of 2014 , the president’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov said Russia that Vladimir Putin plans to visit Japan in 2015, but the exact dates he did not elaborate. This Peskov said the Russian President and the Prime Minister of Japan are going to continue to work on a peace treaty.

In 2012, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev visited Kunashir Island, located in the southern part of the Kuril chain, after which the Japanese government It stated that the area “belongs to Japan, and visits to the leaders of Russia are unacceptable to Tokyo».

Medvedev, in turn, called the Southern Kurils Russian territory and said that the government has the right to engage in the development of their regions.

South Kuril Islands and the southern part of Sakhalin Island (including the city of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk) before World War II belonged to Japan. During the hostilities in August 1945, the Soviet Union occupied the territory. However, this accession has not been fixed in the Peace Treaty of 1951 that the Soviet Union did not sign because that Sakhalin and the South Kuriles it were not included. In 1956 a declaration was signed, provides for the termination of the war ended, but did not put an end to the dispute over the Kuril islands of Habomai and Shikotan.