Koh Ewe and Kurumi Mori, Tokyo correspondent
(BBC) – Japan’s Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi has criticised Vladimir Putin’s first-ever visit to the disputed Kuril islands on Thursday as “absolutely unacceptable”.
Russian state media reported that Putin visited Iturup, known in Japan as Etorofu, one of four islands in the Kuril chain that are claimed by Russia and Japan.
Putin’s trip “has worsened Japanese sentiment towards Russia,” Takaichi told reporters, maintaining the island chain was “a unique territory of [Japan] historically and under international law”.
The countries have been locked in a dispute over the Kurils for decades, and it is the main reason Moscow and Tokyo did not sign a peace treaty after World War Two.
The Kuril islands sit between Hokkaido in northern Japan and Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula. Four of the southernmost islands are claimed by Japan, which calls them the Northern Territories.
They are administered by Russia. At the end of World War Two, the Soviet Union annexed the island chain and deported around 17,000 Japanese residents.
