The leaders of Russia and Japan on Tuesday fell short of agreement over a disputed island chain that has long prevented the two countries from signing a peace treaty to formally end World War II.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s visit to Moscow marked the 25th time he and Russian President Vladimir Putin have met since 2013, a reflection of their efforts to build cooperation, despite the territorial disagreement.
The Soviet army seized the four Kuril Islands, between the Sea of Okhotsk and the Pacific Ocean, in the last days of World War II.
Tokyo’s refusal to recognize Moscow’s sovereignty there has been a barrier to peace for more than seven decades.
Putin told journalists following the talks that there remained “detailed work” ahead for the two parties before any agreement, but hailed the summit as “useful and substantial.”
Moscow is still interested in building the negotiating process on a 1956 Soviet-Japanese declaration, “which stipulates first and foremost the signing of a peace accord,” he said.
The declaration mooted giving Japan two of the smaller islands after a peace deal, which fell through due to Tokyo’s claim over all four and its eventual military alliance with Washington.
Abe said at the joint briefing that they “discussed the peace agreement without hiding anything from one another” and “agreed to continue energetic work,” in comments translated from Japanese.
The two leaders held a “tete-a-tete meeting for about 50 minutes,” Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs press secretary Takeshi Osuga told a media briefing in Moscow following the talks.
Earlier this month, Moscow responded furiously to a New Year’s message from Abe in which he said that Russians living on the islands should be helped to accept that the “sovereignty of their homes will change.”
Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergei Lavrov said that Tokyo needed to recognize Russia’s sovereignty over the Kurils.
“Why is Japan the only country in the world that cannot accept the results of World War II in their entirety?” he asked.
Moscow has also lamented Japan’s hesitation to invest in Russian projects, including on the islands.
Putin said that no “qualitative shift” has happened in the realm of economic cooperation, expressing the hope that bilateral trade would grow to US$30 billion from about US$18 billion in 2017.
Moscow would be keen to see some investment to get the peace talks rolling, his spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said.
“Trade and economic ties must be developed, and that will allow other issues to be resolved,” he said.
Abe’s Moscow visit was the first leg of a trip to Europe, which also included a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, yesterday.
Reports have indicated that Abe might be leaning toward a framework that would see Japan claiming two of the smaller islands, Shikotan and Habomai, which are a group of uninhabited islets.
However, it is not clear whether the Kremlin would be willing to transfer sovereignty over any territory.
The island chain ensures Russia’s strategic control of the Sea of Okhotsk and some southern islands in the chain are less than 10km from Japan’s Hokkaido Island.
Giving away even uninhabited islands would be poorly received in Russia, where World War II is hugely symbolic and post-war territorial gains are seen as non-negotiable.
On Tuesday morning, a small group of protesters holding red flags gathered near the Japanese embassy in Moscow.
Leftist politician Sergei Udaltsov wrote on Facebook that 11 people were detained by police.
An opinion poll by independent Russian pollster the Levada Center last month suggested that 74 percent of Russians would not support exchanging some of the islands for a peace deal, while only 17 percent said they would.
To make a deal work “a vast majority of the public in Russia and Japan must support the agreement,” Dmitry Trenin, who heads the Carnegie Moscow Center, wrote in the Vedomosti newspaper.
Russian state television has been unenthusiastic about the summit.
Top news presenter Dmitry Kiselyov disputed the very notion that Japan could be a “friend” of Russia as long as it opposed Moscow’s policies and had US military “occupying” its territory.
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