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Two emergency monitoring and assessment centers to be built on Kuril Islands in 2019

Russia’s major telecom operator Rostelecom received a subsidy of 2.7 billion rubles to finance these works

MOSCOW, January 22. /TASS/. Two emergency monitoring and assessment centers will be built on Russia’s Far Eastern Kuril Islands in 2019, Marina Dedyushko, a deputy minister for the development of the Far East, said on Tuesday.

"The Russian emergencies ministry will finish the construction of two emergency monitoring and assessment centers in 2019," she said, adding that these centers will be located on the Islands of Kunashir and Iturup.

According to Dedyushko, a 818-kilometer underwater fiber optic line with a traffic capacity of 40 Gb/s was laid to the Kuril Islands to hook up the islands to Russia’s electric communications grid.

Russia’s major telecom operator Rostelecom received a subsidy of 2.7 billion rubles (40.608 million US dollars) to finance these works, Igor Semenikhin, director of Russian communications ministry’s infrastructure projects department, said, adding that his ministry will ask the ministry for the development of the Far East to include the Island of Paramushir into this program. The project, in his words, is estimated at 1.5 billion rubles (22.56 million US dollars).

A socio-economic development program till the year 2025 has been implemented on the Kuril Islands since 2016. More than 20 projects in such areas as transport, energy and social infrastructure have already been realized. The Russian government plans to invest about 11 billion rubles (165.44 million US dollars) in the islands’ development within the next three years.

Acting governor of the Sakhalin region Valery Limarenko said earlier that the three-year infrastructure development program on the Kuril Islands rules out any speculation about possible handover of these islands to Japan.

Since the mid-20th century, Russia and Japan have been negotiating a peace treaty after World War II. The main stumbling block to this is the issue of the ownership of the southern Kuril Islands. After the end of World War II, all Kuril Islands were incorporated into the Soviet Union. However, Japan challenged the ownership of Iturup, Kunashir, Shikotan islands and a number of uninhibited islands of the Lesser Kuril Ridge called the Habomai Islands in Japan. The Russian foreign ministry has repeatedly said Russia’s sovereignty over these islands committed to paper in international legally binding documents cannot be called to question.