Putin celebrates new plant on isle disputed with Japan

September 5, 2019

Vladivostok, Russia--Russian President Vladimir Putin celebrated on Thursday the opening of a new large fishery processing plant built on one of the four northwestern Pacific islands at the center of a decades-old territorial row between Moscow and Tokyo.

Talking with workers of the plant via a video link, Putin, now on a visit to Vladivostok, said he prays for the success of the factory built by major Russian fishery products company Gidrostroy.

Putin apparently intended to highlight Russia's effective control of the island, called Shikotan in Japan, and the other three islands, just before holding a bilateral summit with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe later on Thursday, on the sidelines of an Eastern Economic Forum meeting in the Russian Far East city, pundits said.

The four islands, collectively known in Japan as the Northern Territories, were seized by the former Soviet Union from Japan at the end of World War II. The territorial dispute has been preventing Tokyo and Moscow from concluding a peace treaty to formally end their wartime hostilities.

After holding talks with Putin in Singapore last November, Abe said that they agreed to accelerate peace treaty negotiations based on the 1956 Japan-Soviet joint declaration. The document called for the handover of two of the four islands--Shikotan and the Habomais--to Japan after the conclusion of a peace treaty.

The Russian government designated Shikotan as a priority zone for economic development in 2017.

In May this year, Russia said it will expand projects in the zone, clarifying its stance of developing the island on its own.

Through the video link, Putin also had talks with officials on Shikotan and in the Far Eastern city of Khabarovsk.

On Sunday, a series of local elections will take place in Russia, including a governor poll in Sakhalin, a province in the Far East, which administers the four islands.

As ruling party-backed candidates are reportedly facing uphill battles in the races, Putin apparently utilized the start of the new factory as an election ploy, analysts said. Jiji Press