No talks until Ukraine stance changed: Putin tells Japan

By Riyaz ul Khaliq

ISTANBUL (AA) – Russian President Vladimir Putin has ruled out resuming peace talks with Japan until Tokyo changed its stance on Ukraine.

“Everything that has been done has been done by Japan," Putin replied to a question from Kyodo News during his three-hour-long chat with international journalists in St. Petersburg on Wednesday night.

Russia is “not refusing to engage in such a dialogue, but for it to occur Japan first needs to change its position on the war in Ukraine,” Putin said.

Almost all engagements between Moscow and Tokyo have come to a standstill after Russia launched a war on Ukraine in February 2022.

Tokyo joined its Western allies including the US and other G7 nations, to launch sanctions on Russian citizens, including Putin, as well as other business and related entities.

Russia has been locked in a territorial dispute with Japan over the Kuril Islands. The two countries have not signed a peace treaty since World War II.

At the 1945 Yalta Conference, the Soviet Union agreed that its forces would join the Western allies in the war against Japan and launch military operations on the eastern front. In exchange, it received some Japanese territories, including the Kuril Islands.

After the war, however, Japan rejected the Soviet Union’s sovereignty over the islands.

Due to the dispute, Russia and Japan have never signed a peace treaty and are technically still at war.

With both sides claiming the territories, the question of the Kurils’ sovereignty remains uncertain.

On visiting the contested islands, Putin told the visiting journalists, including from Anadolu, that there was no such immediate plan.

Responding to Putin’s statement, Japanese government’s top spokesman Hayashi Yoshimasa called it “unfair and totally unacceptable.”

Acknowledging relations with Moscow were in a “harsh situation” due to Ukraine, Yoshimasa, however, said Putin’s statement “amounts to shifting responsibility” on Japan.

Tokyo will “continue to uphold its policy of resolving outstanding issues and signing a peace treaty,” he added.