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The whole island of Iturup belongs to Japan and the whole island Urup and the other Kuril Islands to the north constitute possessions of Russia". The islands of Kunashiri, Shikotan and the Habomai Islands, all lying to the south of Iturup, are not explicitly mentioned in the treaty and were understood at the time to be a non-disputed part of Japan.
The former land border on Sakhalin (Russia in yellow, Japan in red) The existing de facto (and, from the Russian point of view, also de jure) Russian-Japanese border follows several sea straits: the La Pérouse Strait, the Nemuro Strait, and Izmeny Strait (Notsuke Strait) and the Sovietsky Strait, which separate Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands from the Japanese island of Hokkaido.
The islands stretch approximately 1,300 km (810 mi) northeast from Hokkaido in Japan to Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia, separating the Sea of Okhotsk from the north Pacific Ocean. There are 56 islands and many minor islets. The Kuril Islands consist of the Greater Kuril Chain and, at the southwest end, the parallel Lesser Kuril Chain. [2]
On 23 August, the 20,000-strong Japanese garrisons on the islands were ordered to surrender as part of the general surrender of Japan. However, some of the garrison forces ignored this order and continued to resist Soviet occupation. [7] From 22 to 28 August, troops of the Kamchatka Defense Area occupied the Kuril Islands from Urup north.
The rest of the Kuril Islands came under Japanese rule after the 1875 Treaty of Saint Petersburg and the end of the Russo-Japanese War in 1905. They would remain under the Japanese until the end of World War II, when the Soviet Union annexed the islands as the result of a military operation which took place during and after the Surrender of ...
Soviet troops took control of the four islands off Japan's Hokkaido - known in Russia as the Kurils and in Japan as the Northern Territories - at the end of World War Two and they have remained in ...
The Kuril Islands dispute is a territorial dispute between Japan and the Russian Federation over the ownership of the four southernmost Kuril Islands. The four disputed islands, like other islands in the Kuril chain that are not in dispute, were annexed by the Soviet Union following the Kuril Islands landing operation at the end of World War II ...
Kunashir is separated by the Catherine Strait (Kunashiri Suido) from the island of Iturup, located 22 km northeast; Kunashir Strait (upper Nemuro Kaikyo) from Shiretoko Peninsula (Hokkaido Island), located 25 km to the west; Izmena Strait (Notsuke Suido or lower Nemuro Kaikyo) from Notsuke Peninsula (Hokkaido Island), located 16 km to the southwest; and by the South Kuril Strait (Yuzhno ...