While the world's attention has been focused on Russia's war in Ukraine,
another long-standing territorial dispute in the country's east has been escalating.
In recent weeks, senior Japanese figures have
restated their country's claim to the southern Kuril Islands.
As tensions grow, this has raised the possibility of a new conflict on Russia's borders.
So, what is the issue all about?
And just how likely is it that we'll see a new far eastern front emerge?
Hello and welcome. If you're new to the channel, my name is James Ker-Lindsay and
here I take an informed look at international relations, conflict, security and statehood.
We tend to think that countries will end a conflict with some form of peace treaty.
But this isn't always the case.
In some instances, they'll make do with the ceasefire.
Even if this allows for some issues to be tackled, such as the exchange of prisoners,
it leaves the main issues unresolved.
Then, occasionally, they might reach a halfway house - something that signifies that the conflict
is over and tackles some of the issues, but stops short of being a full and final settlement.
One of the most interesting cases in modern international relations
centres on Russia and Japan.
Almost eight decades after the end of the Second World War,
the two countries have yet to reach a formal peace treaty.
This is due to their long-standing disagreement over the southern Kuril Islands.
Strategically important, and endowed with significant mineral and energy reserves,
the status of the islands has recently erupted again.
Against the backdrop of the war in Ukraine, senior Japanese figures, including the prime
minister and foreign minister, have again restated that the Islands remain an integral part of Japan.
At 17 million square kilometres, or 6.6 million square miles,
Russia is the world's largest country.
Meanwhile, Japan, at 380,000 square kilometres, or 145,000 square miles,
is the 62nd largest of the 193 members of the United Nations.
In terms of population, they're more evenly matched.
Russia has around 144 million people to Japan's 125 million.
The two countries are also neighbours,
At their nearest uncontested point, where the southern tip of Russia's Sakhalin Island is
closest to the northern point of Hokkaido - the most northerly and second largest of
the main Japanese islands - they lie just 43 kilometres or 28 miles from each other.
On the other side of Hokkaido lie the Kuril Islands.
This is an archipelago of 56 main volcanic islands and many islets running for around 1,200
kilometres, or 750 miles, between the northeast of Hokkaido and Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula.
Although Japan and Russia are close neighbours now, this wasn't always the case.
Having pushed eastward and conquered Siberia in the 17th century,
our story really starts in the 19th century when Russia expanded into East Asia.
Seizing a swathe of territory from China in the 1850s,
this brought Russia into direct confrontation with Japan.
Under the terms of the Treaty of Shimoda, signed in 1855, the two countries agreed
to share Sakhalin Island - with Russia taking the north and Japan the south.
At the same time, they also divided control of the Kuril islands.
While Russia took the islands running north from Urup, Japan gained sovereignty over the
three main southern islands - Iturup, Kunashir and Shikotan - as well as the Habomai Islets.
However, two decades later, in 1875, they signed a new agreement: the Treaty of St Petersburg.
In return for taking control of all of Sakhalin,
Russia ceded the entire Kuril Island chain to Japan.
Over the following decades, tensions rose between Japan and Russia.
This came to a head in 1904 with the Russo-Japanese War.
In what marked an unprecedented defeat for a European power,
Moscow was forced to cede control over much of the territory in the far east,
including the southern half of Sakhalin Island, to Japan.
It would also have enormous regional and international implications.
As well as opening the way for Japan's occupation of Korea and Chinese Manchuria, many attribute the
Russian Revolution, and thus the creation of the Soviet Union, to the country's defeat by Japan.
Over the decades that followed, the rivalry between Japan and the Soviet Union intensified
and in 1939 they came to blows in what amounted to an undeclared war.
Although the USSR won the conflict, Moscow's attention was shifting towards Europe.
As a result, the two countries signed a neutrality pact in April 1941 - a move
that would ultimately free up Japan to turn its sights towards the United States later that year.
In early 1945, the war in Europe ended with the defeat of Nazi Germany
and pressure now grew on the Soviet Union to join the war in the far east.
Reluctant at first, everything changed on 6 August 1945,
when the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima.
On 8 August, the day before the second atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki,
the Soviet Union declared war on Japan and invaded the southern half of Sakhalin Island.
And despite Japan's surrender on 15 August, it then also moved in to take the Kuril islands.
Just two weeks later, at the start of September 1945,
the entire island chain was in Russian hands.
Although the Soviet Union quickly cemented its control over the islands, expelling
their Japanese inhabitants, by the mid-1950s the atmosphere between the two countries was changing.
On 19 October 1956, Moscow and Tokyo signed a landmark peace declaration.
As well as formally ending the state of war and re-establishing diplomatic relations,
they agreed to settle any future disputes by peaceable means,
drop their respective claims for compensation, and negotiate agreements over trade and fishing.
Crucially, though, they were unable to sign a formal peace treaty
due to their differences over the Kuril Islands.
Although the declaration explicitly stated that the two southernmost parts of the
Islands - Shikotan and the Habomai Islets - would be returned to Japan when the sides
concluded a final peace treaty, Japan insisted on sovereignty over its 'Northern Territories';
the four areas originally ceded to it in 1855.
Although the declaration was initially greeted positively by Japan, efforts to
reach a settlement over the northern boundary proved fruitless in the decades that followed.
By the end of the Cold War, the sides had still not settled the issue
and signed a final peace treaty.
With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War in 1991,
Japan called on the newly independent Russian Federation,
as the continuing state of the Soviet Union, to formally return the Islands.
However, Moscow was reluctant to move on the issue.
In part, it argued that Japan's close alliance with the United States
meant that the islands would be militarised if they were returned.
But it also seemed to be shaped by the Island's economic value.
As well as their extensive fishing waters, there were potentially significant oil and gas reserves.
Russia's desire to hold onto the islands was seemingly underscored in 2010 when the then
president, Dmitry Medvedev, became the first Russian leader to visit the islands.
But, by 2016, it seemed as though things were changing.
Against the backdrop of closer commercial links,
Russia's president, Vladimir Putin, and Japan's prime minister,
Shinzo Abe, held a summit where they reached an important eight-point agreement to promote
economic cooperation and seemingly agreed that the question of the Kuril Islands remained open.
This was followed two years later by another summit where they agreed
that any talks should be based on the 1956 peace declaration.
However, hopes for progress were short-lived.
In 2020, Russia introduced a constitutional change
explicitly outlawing any moves to relinquish territory.
At the same time, it steadily began to increase its military presence on the islands;
installing sophisticated anti-ship and anti-aircraft missiles.
Then, in July 2021, the Russian prime minister
visited Iturup - one of the islands directly claimed by Japan.
While Tokyo protested the visit, Russian politicians made it clear
that Moscow now considered the question to be closed.
It's against this backdrop that the issues again come to the fore.
On 28 February 2022, just days after Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine, Hideki Uyama,
the Europe director at the Japanese Foreign Ministry told Japanese parliamentarians
that Russia was in occupation of the Northern Territories.
In response, the Russian government issued a statement noting that the Islands had been legally
transferred as part of "the punishment for Japan's aggression and its alliance with Nazi Germany."
However, in the days that followed both the prime minister, Fumio Kashida,
and foreign minister. Yoshimasa Hayashi, in statements that were seen as a clear
break with the language of the Abe-era openly called the islands an integral part of Japan.
Moreover, Washington took Tokyo's side,
stating that the United States has supported Japan's claims over the Islands since the 1950s.
Since then, things have escalated further as Putin signed an amendment into Russian law
exempting businesses operating on the islands from paying corporate,
property, and land taxes for up to 20 years - a decision that has been condemned by Tokyo.
Meanwhile, relations have also been strained by
Japan's decision to join wider Western sanctions on Russia.
This has seen Moscow add Japan to its list of unfriendly countries.
This in turn has prompted speculation that this could lead to reprisals,
such as banning Japanese fishing vessels from the waters around the islands.
Meanwhile, Tokyo has also increased its monitoring of Russian military activity in the region.
All this raises the obvious question as to whether these developments will lead to conflict.
On balance, it seems highly unlikely.
For all its frustration over the issue,
Japan isn't going to invade the islands to take them back.
Even if it has the conventional military strength to do so, especially with Russia's
obviously weakened military preoccupied elsewhere, Russia nevertheless remains a nuclear power .
Just as NATO won't step into Ukraine the fear of sparking a major escalation with Moscow,
so Tokyo will avoid any steps that would so obviously amount to a direct attack
on Russian territory - at least as seen by Moscow.
But what about the prospects for a settlement.
At this stage, the wider view is that the current conflict in Ukraine is going to make
the dispute over the Kuril islands more difficult to resolve - at least for now.
Indeed, Russia has already announced that it's
suspended peace talks with Japan over the Kuril Islands issue.
However, this isn't to say that the matter is over.
At some point, Russia is going to emerge from the economic isolation it now faces over Ukraine.
Given the calamitous effects on the economy, it's likely that it'll need
to rebuild its ties to many Western countries - not least of all Japan.
This may open the opportunity for negotiations leading to a final settlement of the issue.
But even in this case, a lot will depend on what happens
to - and within - Russia following the end of the war in Ukraine.
Meanwhile, in a strange quirk of history, all this means that, over 75 years after the end
of the Second World War, Japan and Russia still haven't reached a full and final peace treaty.
The question now is whether the new war in Europe
might at last provide an opportunity to settle this long-standing issue.
I hope you found that useful. If so, here are some more videos that you might find interesting.
Thanks so much for watching and see you in the next video.