January24,2019

Shinzo Abe and Vladimir Putin held a leader summit in Moscow on January 22. One of the topics was about the sovereignty over the Kuril Islands, which is strategically important and also has a lot of natural resources. Hundreds of the Russians gathered in downtown Moscow on January 20th, protesting against Putin’s willingness of giving the islands back to Japan. Not only in Moscow, but also in eastern Russian and Sakhalin Island protestors gathered in public to claim their position. 

After World War II, Russia has controlled the islands until today, but Japan claimed some of the islands were theirs. Moreover, the peace treaty and trading tie couldn’t reach an agreement due to the territory issue. Mr. Putin seemed willing to resolve the issue by returning the island to Japan. However, Russian protestors insisted that they would not give up their land since they had fought hard to keep the land.