Russia Summons Japan's Ambassador in Kuril Islands Row
Russia summoned Japan’s ambassador to protest against what it called “anti-Russian” remarks by the Japanese prime minister, the sharpest exchange yet in an escalating row over the disputed Kuril Islands. It followed President Putin’s visit last week to the islands, which Tokyo condemned as “absolutely unacceptable”. The 150-year-old territorial dispute is straining an already frozen relationship.
The islands, seized by the Soviet Union at the end of the Second World War and claimed by Japan ever since, have kept the two nations from ever signing a formal peace treaty, and Mr Putin’s pointed visit was calculated to assert control and needle Tokyo. That Japan — a G7 member deeply aligned with the West on Ukraine — is now trading formal protests with Moscow shows how the war has hardened enmities far beyond Europe. For Russia, stoking the dispute rallies nationalist sentiment and punishes a hostile neighbour at little cost; for Japan, it sharpens the case for rearmament already under way. Watch whether the exchanges stay rhetorical or harden into something more.