MOSCOW, August 9. The Russian Foreign Ministry condemned the inaction of the Tokyo authorities during a protest rally on the 76th anniversary of the USSR's entry into the war against militarist Japan. The event was organized by Japanese ultra-right organizations near the Russian embassy in Tokyo. Radicals shouted slogans demanding the return of the «northern territories» — this is how the islands of Kunashir, Iturup, Shikotan and Habomai are called in Japan.
«Such actions, carried out with the connivance of the Japanese authorities, once again testify to the reluctance of official Tokyo and a number of political and social forces of the country to look directly into the eyes of history and draw proper lessons from it,» the Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
The department recalled that the USSR entered the war in the Far East on August 8, 1945 in strict accordance with the decisions of the allied powers and assumed international obligations. This step by the Soviet Union made a decisive contribution to the early end of the bloody war and was fully legitimized in the Act of Japan's surrender of September 2, 1945 and the UN Charter. «We are seriously concerned about the continuing attempts of the Japanese side to ignore the internationally recognized results of the Second World War, as well as the unwillingness to give an objective assessment of the country's militaristic past,» the ministry said. 
«Pies with poison»: the FSB revealed the plans of the Japanese for sabotage against the USSR The absence of a peace treaty overshadowed the relationship between Russia and Japan for many years. Tokyo claims the islands of Kunashir, Shikotan, Iturup and Habomai, citing a bilateral Trade and Borders Treaty of 1855. In 1956, Moscow agreed to consider transferring Habomai and Shikotan after a peace agreement. The Soviet side hoped to put an end to the territorial disputes, but Tokyo did not abandon its claims to all the islands. As a result, a peace treaty was never concluded. Moscow's position is that the islands entered the USSR as a result of World War II, and Russia's sovereignty over them is beyond question. 
The entry of the USSR into the war with Japan (1945)