KHABAROVSK, July 5. /TASS/. Japan is ramping up its revanchist plans for the Kuril Islands, Secretary of the Russian Security Council Nikolay Patrushev said.
"The border situation on the territory of the Far Eastern District is being shaped under the conditions of the US and its allies increasing their military presence in the Arctic and Asia-Pacific regions and activating Japan’s revanchist aspirations with regards to the Kuril Islands by means of creating new military blocs," he said at a meeting on the issues of national security in the Far Eastern Federal District in Khabarovsk on Tuesday.
Since the middle of the last century, Moscow and Tokyo have been intermittently negotiating a peace agreement following World War II. The main obstacle to its conclusion is the question of the ownership of the southern part of the Kuril ridge. In 1945, the entire archipelago was incorporated into the Soviet Union, but the Japanese side disputes the ownership of Iturup, Kunashir, Shikotan, and the group of now uninhabited islands, which in Japan is called Habomai. The Russian Foreign Ministry has repeatedly stressed that Russian sovereignty over them, which has the appropriate international legal form, is beyond question.