{"id":73811,"date":"2026-08-13T18:22:47","date_gmt":"2026-08-13T18:22:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/73811\/"},"modified":"2026-08-13T18:22:47","modified_gmt":"2026-08-13T18:22:47","slug":"putin-draws-tokyos-ire-over-1st-visit-to-contested-island","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/73811\/","title":{"rendered":"Putin draws Tokyo’s ire over 1st visit to contested island"},"content":{"rendered":"

Russian President Vladimir Putin visited a disputed island near Japan Thursday, drawing a strong reaction from Tokyo, which said the move made improving relations between the two countries more difficult.<\/p>\n

The island, known in Russia as Iturup and \u200bin Japan as Etorofu, is one of four in \u200bthe Kuril chain, close to Japan’s main islands, that Moscow seized in the days after Japan’s surrender in World War II.<\/p>\n

Tokyo has maintained its claim to them, making their return a condition for concluding a formal peace treaty that would unlock closer economic ties.<\/p>\n

It “hurts the feelings of the Japanese people and is absolutely unacceptable,” Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said in a televised statement.<\/p>\n

“We hope that the Russian side will take the seriousness of this matter fully to heart,” she added.<\/p>\n

Ties between Moscow and Tokyo soured after Putin ordered \u2060the full-scale \u2060invasion of Ukraine<\/a> in 2022. Japan joined other nations in condemning the attack and imposing sanctions on Russia.<\/p>\n

Putin’s visit to the island comes two days before Japan marks 81 years since its surrender ended World War II and a day after North Korea fired a missile into the sea separating it from Japan ahead of major joint military exercises by Seoul and Washington.<\/p>\n

Dmitry Medvedev was the first Russian leader to visit the disputed territory \u2060in 2010.<\/p>\n


\n \"Russia's
\n <\/a>
\n Russia’s President Vladimir Putin interacts with locals on Iturup Island, one of four islands in the contested chain known as the Kuril Islands in Russia and the Northern Territories in Japan, Aug. 13, 2026. (AFP Photo)<\/p>\n

On Thursday, the Russian and Chinese ambassadors to Japan, Nikolai Nozdrev and Chinese Ambassador Wu Jianghao, issued a joint statement pledging to oppose attempts to revise the results of World \u200bWar II.<\/p>\n

They also warned against remilitarization in the Asia-Pacific, language that echoes Moscow’s \u200brejection of Japan’s claim to the islands.<\/p>\n

On the trip, which state news agency TASS described as Putin’s first to the island chain, \u2060he visited \u200cthe \u200cYasny fish-processing plant on the island, after overseeing navy drills \u2060in Russia’s Far East.<\/p>\n

Vesti TV channel images showed \u200cPutin in a dark suit, beside two large tuna and a halibut laid out on \u200ba table, as two officials spoke \u2060about fishing and the migratory behavior of fish. \u2060He also stopped to try local fish roe.<\/p>\n

“What lovely weather you have there, \u2060just like a \u200bresort!” Putin told a group of locals.<\/p>\n

\"\"\/<\/p>\n

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\n This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Russian President Vladimir Putin visited a disputed island near Japan Thursday, drawing a strong reaction from Tokyo, which…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":73812,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[47331,8,47104,47503,636,52,17578],"class_list":["post-73811","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tokyo","tag-iturup-island","tag-japan","tag-kuril-islands","tag-northern-territories-in-japan","tag-russia","tag-tokyo","tag-vladimir-putin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73811","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73811"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73811\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/73812"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}