Despite Japanese Prime Minister Shinzō Abe’s hopeful meeting, on October 4, with Russian Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich, as well as Abe’s talks with President Vladimir Putin, at the United Nations, the week before (Kyodo, October 6), no prospect for normalizing Russo-Japanese relations currently exists. During August–September 2015, denunciations by the Japanese and Russian governments of each other’s actions regarding the disputed Kurile Islands were an almost daily occurrence. Indeed, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs infuriated the Japanese government by saying at one point that the problem of the Kurile Islands—which the Soviet Union occupied during World War II …read more
Source: The Jamestown Foundation