News Japan lodges protest over Russia’s maritime restrictions near Northern Territories

Japan announced on Wednesday that it had formally protested to Moscow after Russia issued warnings about live-fire exercises and imposed temporary navigation restrictions for foreign vessels in waters off the disputed islands north of Hokkaido. The islands — known in Japan as the Northern Territories and in Russia as the Southern Kurils — remain a longstanding flashpoint in bilateral relations and have prevented the two nations from concluding a peace treaty since the end of the Second World War.


Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi told reporters that Tokyo had received two separate notifications from Russian authorities about the planned activities, some of which Japan regards as occurring within its own territorial waters.

Hayashi said they "run counter to Japan's position on the Northern Territories and are unacceptable," and that Tokyo lodged its protest with Moscow via diplomatic channels on both occasions. The first warning on Oct. 5 said a live-fire drill will be held in a period until Nov. 1 in waters off one of the islands, he said. The second received Monday was for the temporary suspension of the innocent passage of foreign military and government vessels in waters around the Northern Territories until next Monday. The right to innocent passage under the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea ensures that a foreign ship can sail through the territorial waters of another state unless it poses a security threat.

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Tokyo maintains that the four islands—Etorofu, Kunashiri, Shikotan and the Habomai islet group—were illegally seized by the Soviet Union soon after Japan's surrender in World War II on 15 August 1945, while Russia views the act as legitimate.