Putin visits the Kuril Islands for the first time. Japan issues a strong protest.

Russian President Vladimir Putin made his first trip to the Kuril Islands, traveling to the island of Iturup, the Kremlin’s press service reported.

During the trip, Putin visited the Yasny fish processing plant, the Kuril Central District Hospital, and a school named after Hero of Russia E.D. Norpolov, and met with Sakhalin region Governor Valery Limarenko.

Limarenko told Putin that at meetings with residents — even in the most remote places — “the population says: everything for victory.”

“That’s the kind of people we have. The genetic code of a winner,” Putin replied, according to the Russian state news agency TASS.

Japan’s Foreign Ministry issued a message saying the country “strongly protests” over Putin’s visit to the Kurils, Kyodo News reported.

Speaking a day earlier at Pacific Fleet exercises, Putin said Russia had maintained a constructive relationship over the Kuril Islands with former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and other Japanese leaders — but that Tokyo has since changed its position.

According to Putin, the Soviet Union and Japan signed a declaration in the mid-1950s that opened the way to a peace treaty and, in turn, to resolving the dispute over the Kuril Islands. Japan later abandoned that declaration, he said, though Russia met the Japanese government halfway and resumed talks toward a peace treaty.

“Now, unfortunately, we are seeing changes in positions that, I stress, were entirely unprovoked on our part,” the Russian president said.

The USSR annexed the Kuril Islands following World War II. In 1956, the Soviet Union signed a peace declaration with Japan, promising to return the islands of Shikotan and Habomai once the two sides concluded a peace treaty. Japan’s government later began demanding the return of all the islands, and a peace treaty was never signed.

Shortly after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russian authorities halted peace treaty negotiations with Japan, which had joined Western sanctions. After that, Japan, for the first time since 2003, began calling the Kurils “illegally occupied” territory.

To date, the head of the Russian state and government officials have visited the Kuril Islands five times. In 2010, Dmitry Medvedev, who was then president of Russia, traveled there. In 2012, 2015, and 2019, he visited the Kurils as prime minister. In 2021, Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin visited the Kurils.