The Kremlin says that Russia’s relations with Japan are currently “reduced to zero” due to Tokyo’s “unfriendly” stance, so there is no dialogue on the peace treaty.
“Under these conditions, it is hardly possible to reach any agreements without changing the modality in our relations,” Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on 20 February.
According to media reports, Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said during a speech in parliament the same day that Tokyo remains committed to resolving its long-standing territorial dispute with Russia and signing a formal peace treaty despite strained bilateral relations.
Russia and Japan never signed a peace treaty after the end of World War II. The ownership of the four southern Kuril Islands remained in dispute.
After Russia launched a full-scale military invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Japan imposed sanctions against Russian President Vladimir Putin and top officials, and revoked Russia’s most facilitated trade status. At the same time, Japan announced that it would provide military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine.
Russia put Japan on a list of “unfriendly countries” and said it was freezing peace treaty talks.
In March 2022, Tokyo said it would officially refer to the Southern Kuril Islands as “ancestral territory of Japan under illegal occupation.”
The USSR annexed the Kuril Islands as a result of World War II. In 1956, the Soviet Union and Japan signed a peace declaration, according to which Shikotan and Habomai were to be handed over to Japan after a peace treaty. But the Japanese authorities in the following years were only agreed to return all the islands. The treaty has still not been signed.
Now the Kuril Islands are part of Russia’s Sakhalin Oblast. Japan believes that the southern islands of the Kuril Ridge – Iturup, Kunashir, Shikotan and Habomai – should belong to it under the Treaty on Trade and Boundaries of 1855.