Peace treaty with Japan ‘unrealistic’ – Russian envoy
Moscow cannot engage in talks with Tokyo on a formal peace treaty as long as the Japanese government follows the West’s course aimed at hurting Russia’s security and economy, the country’s ambassador to Japan, Nikolay Nozdrev, has said.
The two nations failed to reach a final settlement following the end of World War II and have made little progress over the last eight decades. A major stumbling block is Japan’s claim to four islands in the Kuril Archipelago, which the Soviet Union captured during the war.
In the San Francisco Treaty of 1951, Tokyo confirmed that it had no aspirations towards the Kurils, but later claimed that the islands in question are not part of the archipelago. Russia maintains that the four islands are an integral part of its territory.
On Friday, Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba said his government would “firmly maintain” the policy of resolving the Kurils issue and “concluding a peace treaty” with Moscow. It is “regrettable” that the two sides have not been able to reach an agreement after so many years, he said. However, the PM acknowledged that there was currently “a difficult situation” in relations between Japan and Russia due to the Ukraine conflict.
When asked for comment by Izvestia later in the day, Nozdrev replied that Russia views “such statements from the prime minister and other politicians as unrealistic.”
“Back in March 2022, we officially announced that, given Tokyo’s unfriendly stance, we could not conduct negotiations on the peace treaty,” he recalled.
Japan has fully backed the West’s sanctions policy towards Russia, imposing 25 rounds of “illegal” restrictions on the country since the escalation between Moscow and Kiev three years ago, including the latest package in mid-January, the ambassador explained.
Tokyo has also conducted “a Russophobic campaign” supported by the country’s media, which is “tirelessly replicating stories packed with anti-Russian narratives,” he added.
Nozdrev accused the Japanese government of inconsistency, saying that while “speaking about their desire to continue some kind of dialogue on the peace treaty... they, at the same time, are disseminating anti-Russian statements, threatening with sanctions.”
“There is a dualism of approaches. It seems to me that no one in Japan itself clearly understands how those two things can coexist,” he stressed.
