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Japan reacted angrily on Tuesday after Russia withdrew from peace treaty talks with Tokyo and froze joint economic projects related to the disputed Kuril Islands because of sanctions imposed by the Kishida administration over Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. Moscow and Tokyo have still not formally ended World War II hostilities because of the stand-off over islands just off Japan’s northernmost island of Hokkaido, known in Russia as the Kurils and in Japan as the Northern Territories. The islands were seized by the Soviet Union at the end of second world war. Japan has imposed sanctions on 76 individuals, seven banks...

Fumio Kishida, Japan’s prime minister, said that southern Kuril Islands are a sovereign part of his country, and not part of Russia, which has controlled the group of islands since 1945. Speaking in the Diet earlier this week, Kishida told lawmakers the Kuril Islands are “original territories of Japan”. The islands have been a point of controversy between Japan and the Russia for decades. Moscow took control of the islands after World War II in 1945. In recent years, the Japanese government had refrained from referring to the islands as its “original territories” in order to avoid upsetting the Russian...

RUSSIA has staged a military show of strength by firing missiles off its warships near Japan after Tokyo claimed sovereignty over the disputed Kuril Islands. The Kuril archipelago was grabbed by Stalin at the end of the Second World War - but Japan refuses to accept Moscow’s jurisdiction.... ...The latest show of strength follows a Japanese diplomatic protest in June, when Putin ordered drills involving 10,000 troops, 500 military vehicles and 12 warships on the Kuril islands of Iturup, Kunashir, as well as on Russia’s largest island Sakhalin. Officially Japan and Russia have still not signed a peace treaty ending...

Tokyo (AFP) - Japan has lodged a protest with Russia after scrambling four jet fighters to intercept a foreign aircraft -- believed to be Russian -- which briefly violated its airspace, officials said Wednesday. The foreign ministry made the protest shortly after the plane entered Japanese airspace off the northernmost main island of Hokkaido, near a disputed island chain, on Tuesday afternoon.

A powerful 7.3-magnitude earthquake has hit east of the Kuril Islands in the Pacific Ocean, which are disputed between Russia and Japan, the United States Geological Survey said Thursday. The quake hit at 3:49 a.m. Friday (1749 GMT Thursday) at a location 428 kilometres (266 miles) east of the Russian town of Severokurilsk and 1,787 kilometres (1,111 miles) northeast of Tokyo, the USGS said on its website. Officials issued a tsunami warning for the city of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky on Russia's far eastern Kamchatka Peninsula, RIA Novosti news agency reported. "The tsunami station... has issued a warning in connection with the earthquake...

Breaking, will update in minutes. No tsunami watch yet

When in 1945 the USSR broke the non-aggression pact and occupied Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands, it was a time for the Japanese to boil over, although not at once. The disputes over the Kuril Islands have even reflected in geographic maps: for instance, Japanese maps happened to distort the real territories of Russia and showed the Kuril Islands as belonging to Japan. Read full story The Kuril Islands: Japanese Russia or Russian Japan?

Kuril Defenders Go On to Offensive Advocates of the territorial integrity for the Kuril Islands staged a rally in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk past Saturday, having timed the action to the start of official visit of Russia’s President Vladimir Putin to Japan. The participants wanted Putin “to declare a refusal to transfer any territory to Japan” and asked money to arrange propaganda activities in the neighboring country. The rally was staged by For Russia’s Kurils! association of deputies of Sakhalin Duma and by For Integrity of Russia’s Eastern Territory public organization and timed to the start of Putin’s official visit to Japan. The...