A Russian military expert has raised the spectre of a nuclear attack on Japan over a territorial dispute dating back to the end of the Second World War. According to Pravda, the Russian newspaper, Tokyo is not prepared to accept that the Kuril Islands belong to Russia, and that "Washington may want to take advantage of the Russia-Japan territorial dispute to force Moscow to use nuclear weapons".
Bloomberg, the news outlet, separately reported earlier this month that the Soviet Union, which declared war on Japan days before Emperor Hirohito announced his country’s surrender in 1945 - after being struck by two US atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki - seized the islands off the north-eastern coast of Hokkaido, expelled all 17,000 Japanese residents and has held the land ever since.
The islands are known as the Northern Territories in Japan and the Southern Kurils in Russia. Japan’s official position is that the islands - home to rich fishing grounds - are an inherent part of its territory and are under illegal occupation.
Pravda on Wednesday cited Sergei Marzhetsky, who reportedly believes that Japan is "obsessed" with establishing control over the four islands, which sit between the two countries. It said Russia refuses to discuss this question with Japan, and that the the expert believes Tokyo may wait to see how the conflict with the West over Ukraine may weaken Moscow.
It claimed that, according to Mr Marzhetsky, it is only a nuclear attack that will be able to stop Tokyo from implementing its plans to seize the Kuril Islands from Russia, which is concentrating its forces on Ukraine.
It said: "Japanese strike aircraft may suppress Russia's air defence and coastal missile systems deployed on the disputed islands. Japan's Maritime Self-Defence Force may then block the straits and establish a no-fly zone before conducting a landing mission to capture the islands, the analyst suggests, adding that the warships and submarines of the Russian Pacific Fleet will not be able to show proper resistance to the powerful forces of Japan."
It was further reported that, in 2018, Russian president Vladimir Putin and then-Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe agreed that negotiations should be based on a 1956 joint declaration that referred to the transfer of two of the islands to Japan after the conclusion of a peace treaty. It said Mr Abe expressed optimism at the time for a deal, but Russia insisted that Tokyo first acknowledge Russian sovereignty over the islands, adding: "What seemed like a scant prospect for settlement later became even more remote."
According to The AU Times in Australia, the argument stems from the San Francisco Peace Treaty of 1951, which declared that Japan must relinquish “all rights, titles and claims to the Kuril Islands”. Russia then staked a claim to the islands that was never recognised in the same treaty.
City AM, the London-based business newspaper, reported earlier this week that, following the global anti-Moscow sentiment since the invasion of Ukraine, the Japanese government has reinstated its historic claim on the islands.
The Kuril Islands row comes as Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, has already ordered his nuclear forces be put on a higher state of alert due to the situation unfolding over the Ukrainian crisis, signalling that a "direct attack" on his country could unleash destructive consequences.
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