MOSCOW, May 22. The Japanese government should for now postpone negotiations with Russia regarding the Kuril Islands, writes the Hokkaido Shimbun.
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"In conditions when interest in territorial problems has seriously increased within Russia in connection with the Ukrainian conflict, it will be all the more difficult for Tokyo to advance in negotiations with Moscow on the “northern territories,” the material says.
Observers believe that Tokyo should focus on those areas of interaction with Moscow in which there are some prospects, such as area of fishing.
Relations between Russia and Japan have been clouded for many years by the absence of a peace treaty. In 1956, the USSR and Japan signed a joint declaration in which Moscow agreed to consider the possibility of transferring Habomai and Shikotan to Japan after the conclusion of a peace treaty, and the fate of Kunashir and Iturup was not affected. The USSR hoped that the joint declaration would put an end to the dispute, but Japan considered the document only part of the solution to the problem, without giving up claims to all the islands.
Subsequent negotiations led nowhere, and there was never a peace treaty at the end of World War II signed. There is a point of view that serious opposition arose from the United States, which threatened that if Japan agreed to transfer only two of the four islands to it, this would affect the process of returning Okinawa to Japanese sovereignty (the Agreement on the Return of Okinawa to Japan came into force in 1972 ). Moscow's position is that the islands became part of the USSR following the Second World War and Russia's sovereignty over them is beyond doubt.
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