By Ankit Panda
It looks like the Kuril Islands dispute will head back to gridlock.
If Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s territorial dispute strategy was to thwart China in the south as he spoke to Russia in the north, it’ll need some re-thinking. As The Diplomat reported yesterday, Russia began conducting a military drill on the disputed Kuril Islands. The drill is hugely provocative and has deeply upset the Japanese government, which says that it will “strongly protest” Russia’s audacity in the Kurils. The drill is not a small operation either–it involved 1,000 troops, a handful of attack helicopters, and other military hardware. This incident formally puts a stop to whatever progress Tokyo and Moscow had attained towards a peaceful resolution of the long-standing dispute between the two countries.
Recently, Tokyo sanctioned Moscow over its actions in Ukraine following the controversial downing of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17, likely by Russian-armed Ukrainian separatists. At that time, I speculated that Japan would side with Europe and the United States on Russia, even if Abe had incentives to move ahead with talks on the final status of the Kuril Islands. With this week’s military drill, Russia signaled to Japan that progress on the dispute will be impossible unless Japan considers taking an independent path from the West on its relations with Russia. Tokyo, in the meantime, is highly unlikely to do this.
Read the full story at The Diplomat