Putin Plants a Flag on Islands Japan Says Were Stolen, and Tokyo Is Fuming

Russian President Vladimir Putin made his first-ever visit to Iturup, part of the Kuril Islands chain claimed by both Russia and Japan, on Thursday, touring a fish plant, a hospital and a school and meeting with Sakhalin regional governor Valery Limarenko. The trip marked the first time a sitting Russian president has set foot on the disputed islands [1, 2].

Japan’s Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi summoned Russian Ambassador Nikolai Nozdrev to lodge a “strong protest,” telling him the visit would have “an extremely negative impact on Japan-Russia relations,” which are already strained by Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine [3, 4]. Japan calls the islands its “Northern Territories,” maintaining they were illegally seized by the Soviet Union in the closing days of World War II, which Japan surrendered to end on August 15, 1945 — one day after this visit. Russia, which calls the chain the Southern Kurils, insists the 1945 transfer was legitimate [1, 4].

Why It Sucks:

Japan

• A sitting president just walked onto disputed land. No Russian president had ever visited Iturup before, and Tokyo views the trip as Moscow deliberately normalizing control over territory Japan considers stolen [1, 2].
• Protest is the only card Japan has to play. Summoning an ambassador and issuing a “strong protest” carries no real enforcement weight, underscoring how little leverage Tokyo has to reverse an 80-year-old territorial loss [3, 4].
• Timing reads as a deliberate provocation. The visit lands just a day before the anniversary of Japan’s WWII surrender, a symbolically loaded date that Japan sees as rubbing salt in an old wound [1, 4].

Russia

• A president visiting his own country’s fish plant is news. From Moscow’s standpoint, Putin toured a hospital and school on Russian soil, and treating a domestic infrastructure visit as an international incident is exactly the kind of Western-aligned overreaction the Kremlin expects from Tokyo [2, 4].
• Sanctions-era relations have nowhere left to fall. With Japan already aligned against Russia over Ukraine, the Kremlin has little diplomatic capital left to lose by asserting sovereignty exactly where it already exercises full control [4].
• Every visit gets read as a message, denying leaders normal travel. Putin cannot travel to a region within his own country’s internationally recognized borders without it being cast as an act of aggression, which Moscow considers a distortion of a routine domestic trip [1, 2].

Iturup Island Residents

• Locals live inside a permanent flashpoint. The roughly 6,000 mostly ethnic Russian residents who depend on the fish plant, hospital and school Putin toured now find their everyday infrastructure turned into a diplomatic photo-op in a decades-old dispute they didn’t start [2].
• Every high-profile visit raises the stakes on their home. A presidential trip invites exactly the kind of international attention and protest that keeps the islands’ sovereignty perpetually unsettled, complicating long-term investment and security planning for people who just live there [3, 4].
• Their future is negotiated by other capitals. Whether the islands stay Russian or eventually change hands is a decision that will be made in Moscow and Tokyo, not by the residents whose homes, jobs and schools hang in the balance [1, 4].

Sources & Citations:

[1] Al Jazeera: Japan protests as Russia’s Putin visits disputed Kuril Islands
[2] NPR: Vladimir Putin’s first visit to disputed Pacific islands draws Tokyo protest
[3] TRT World: Japan summons Russian envoy over Putin visit to disputed Kuril island
[4] France 24: Japan summons Russian ambassador after Putin visits disputed Kuril islands