Russia and Japan are negotiating a pending peace treaty since 1945. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov receives his colleague Taro Kono for talks in Moscow. Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe had agreed last year to push ahead with the stalled negotiations over the treaty.
The Soviet Union occupied four Japanese islands of the southern Kuril Islands at the end of the Second World War. Therefore, there is no peace treaty more than seven decades later, and the economic cooperation of neighboring countries on the Pacific is limited. The basis of the new negotiations is a Soviet-Japanese agreement of 1956, according to which Russia could return two islands upon conclusion of a peace treaty.
The Russian foreign ministry dampened expectations before Kono’s visit. For a peace treaty Tokyo must „fully recognize the consequences of the Second World War, including the sovereignty of our country over the southern Kuril Islands,“ it said in a statement.
