Since the end of World War II, the Soviet Union has occupied the South Kuril Islands, a group of islands in northern Japan. To this day, there is therefore no peace treaty with Russia, and the rhetoric between the two countries has recently intensified again. Ukraine is now siding with Japan.
In reaction to Russia’s annexation of Ukrainian territories, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy issued a decree recognizing the Russian Pacific archipelago of the South Kuril Islands as sovereign territory of Japan. Zelenskyj spoke of recognition of Japan’s territorial integrity and called on the world community to also recognize the area as Japanese. “An important decision was made today. It’s fair, legally impeccable. Historical,” he said in a video distributed in Kyiv. The Ukrainian parliament had previously passed a corresponding resolution.
The Soviet Union had conquered the areas north of Japan as the victorious power in World War II. Japan and Russia, the legal successors of the Soviet Union, still have no peace treaty because of the territorial dispute. “Russia has no right to these areas,” Zelenskyy said. Everyone in the world knows that, action must be taken now. The Russian occupiers must be driven out everywhere and defeated as aggressors, Zelenskyj said. This is the only way wars can be prevented in the future.
The conflict between Japan and Russia had recently intensified. For example, Russia banned Japanese ships from fishing off the four southernmost Kuril Islands, which are disputed between the two countries. After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Japan not only participated in Western sanctions against the giant empire, but also spoke for the first time in 20 years of an “illegal occupation” of the islands, which are “an integral part of Japan”. Shinzo Abe, the predecessor of the current Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, avoided this turn of events in the hope of finding an agreement with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The Kuril Islands, with a total of more than 30 islands, are only partially inhabited due to frequent earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. The waters are very rich in fish. During the Cold War, the archipelago was of strategic importance to the Soviet Union. In recent months, Russia says it has increased its military presence there again.
