Putin's parting gift

Will he give the Kuril Islands to the Japanese?

At the end of April, Vladimir Putin will receive Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda. There is no doubt: among the issues discussed there will definitely be the issue of the Kuril Islands

Japan made another attempt to resolve the issue of ownership of the South Kuril Islands in its favor. This time, the Land of the Rising Sun took an unconventional path. The little-known public organization “Russian-Japanese Peace Park,” headed by the mayor of the Japanese city of Syari, proposed including the Russian island of Urup in this park. The city of Shari is located on the Shiretoko Peninsula, in the northeast of the Japanese island of Hokkaido. Actually, now only the Shiretoko Peninsula is included in this park. If you look at the geographical map, you can clearly see that Shiretoko and Urup are at a respectful distance from each other. Between them are the Russian islands: the Lesser Kuril Ridge, Shikotan, Kunashir and Iturup, which the Japanese have long claimed. The public organization explains its desire to see Urup Island as part of the park with “concern for the environmental situation in the southern region of the Sea of ​​Okhotsk due to the steady decrease in the amount of drifting ice that regulates the overall ecosystem” . The “Russian-Japanese Peace Park” wants this issue to be discussed during the G8 summit in July this year on the island of Hokkaido.

Gold of Urup This is a strange proposal from the Japanese, because the island of Urup is almost uninhabited. There is a lighthouse on it and gold was discovered not so long ago. Moreover, a lot of gold was discovered here. Geological exploration expeditions say that the gold deposits of the island contain from 50 to 500 grams of gold per 1 ton of ore. For comparison: the content of yellow metal in Siberian deposits is 2–6 g per the same ton of ore. And the total gold reserve of the studied part of Urup Island is estimated at at least 45 tons. Maybe this is where the Japanese are interested in Urup Island? After all, Urup is no longer the Southern Kuril Islands, but the Middle Kuril Islands, which the Japanese apparently did not lay claim to before.

The Kuril Islands and Sakhalin Island are on all Japanese maps, and as territories of Japan. The Japanese print huge quantities of books and booklets about the Kuril Islands, which they call the Northern Territories. They systematically distribute all these printed products to the residents of the Kuril Islands. The local Kuril press even published an unofficial report by Japanese politicians and sociologists on the further development of the Kuril Islands in Japanese, which, in particular, said: “ All public utilities should be transferred to the Japanese side free of charge. Russian citizens will be able to obtain Japanese citizenship in five years, but only after special verification. Television and radio broadcasting in Russian will actually cease after the transfer of the islands. Russian higher education diplomas will be invalid . " After this, the inhabitants of the Kuril Islands began to call their islands the Japanese Autonomous Region.

Far from Moscow

In Russia, the Kuril Islands are remembered only when natural disasters occur there or one of the leaders of Japan or Russia once again talks about the territorial problem. For example, in 2005, the Kuril Islands were remembered at a government meeting in connection with the trip there of then Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov. “We were very lucky: the weather was clear, which allowed the plane to land, one might say by chance, on Iturup. Because the runway was created by the Japanese over 60 years ago and is actually the deck of an aircraft carrier for kamikaze takeoff in one direction, that is, into the air ,” Ivanov shared his impressions.

At the same government meeting, it was decided to create a new federal target program for the Kuril Islands in the amount of 17 billion rubles until 2015. The previous program was considered a failure. “Of the planned 153 events, only 40 were actually implemented,” officials admitted. For example, about 30 million rubles were spent on the construction of a geothermal station in Kunashir. But then it suddenly turned out that the pipes were of the wrong diameter, therefore, the power of the power plant was 2 times less than desired, and therefore not even the entire city of Yuzhno-Kurilsk could be provided with light. There is nothing to say about environmental protection; everything around was burned by emissions of sulfur vapors. And most importantly: geothermal reserves will last, at best, ten years, but after five years of operation, the power of such stations drops by 50%.

A separate item of expenditure of the federal Kuril program is cultural objects. For example, the reconstruction of a cinema in Yuzhno-Kurilsk cost the federal budget 15 million 750 thousand rubles. In official reports, this object was called a cinema, but in fact a church was built. Moreover, this is the second one on the island, although the first one is almost always empty. The latest real achievements of the Kuril programs are deforestation on the site of the proposed new airport on Iturup Island and the replacement of concrete slabs at the airfield on Kunashir Island.

But much of what has been built on the Kuril Islands over the past 15 years was built with Japanese money. “Here the Japanese constantly give gifts, dolls, now they gave us a power plant in Shikotan and a school bus. You see what gifts. Any developed state helps the aborigines, gives them beads...” - former head of the South Kuril region Vladimir Zema told the author.

Japanese Gambit

Actually, Japan needs not so much the islands themselves: o. Shikotan, islands of the Lesser Kuril ridge, o. Kunashir and Fr. Iturup with a total area of ​​200 thousand square meters. km. The Japanese need, first of all, the sea areas adjacent to the islands, where valuable species of fish and seafood can be caught on an industrial scale: saury, salmon, squid, sea cucumber, sea urchin and much more, for example, the unique ahnfeltia algae, which is almost gone nowhere.

And of course, the Kuril Islands are an outlet to the Pacific Ocean: if they become Japanese, then the most important straits for shipping, the Catherine and Treason Straits, will also come under the jurisdiction of the Land of the Rising Sun.

What will happen to the Kuril Islands tomorrow - the Kuril Islands themselves can only guess. On the one hand, there is the Memorandum of the Commander-in-Chief of the Allied Powers to the Japanese Imperial Government dated January 29, 1946, according to which the territory of Japan was determined. The Kuril Islands and the Habomai group of islands, that is, what is now called the islands of the Lesser Kuril Chain, among other other islands (29 islands in total), were excluded by this memorandum from the territory of Japan. As a result of World War II, Japan lost 44% of its territories. In 1956, in the Joint Declaration of the USSR and Japan, the Soviet Union agreed to transfer Habomai Islands and Shikotan Islands to Japan only after a peace treaty was concluded. Modern politicians, both in Japan and in Russia, now refer specifically to this declaration. At the same time, none of the official Russian officials mentions the Memorandum of the USSR government to the Japanese government dated January 27, 1960, which, in particular, says: “The Soviet government, considering that the new military treaty signed by the Japanese government is directed against the Soviet Union... cannot help ensure that the transfer of the said islands to Japan would expand the territory used by foreign troops. In view of this, the Soviet government considers it necessary to declare that only subject to the withdrawal of all foreign troops from Japanese territory and the signing of a peace treaty between the USSR and Japan, the islands of Habomai and Shikotan will be transferred to Japan. As provided for in the Joint Declaration of the USSR and Japan of October 19, 1956.” This document deals primarily with American bases on the island of Okinawa, in Japan, which were located there back in 1947.

Expensive gifts

But no matter what conclusions legal scholars and politicians make, referring to international acts, a different law applies in Russia. “All the residents of the Kuril Islands surveyed believe that absolutely nothing depends on their opinion. If President Putin wants to give up the islands, he won’t ask anyone,” the Soviet Sakhalin newspaper wrote back in 2001. Actually, this is what happened with the transfer of islands to China in the Khabarovsk Territory and the Chita Region. The local population sharply objected, and Putin took the islands and gave them to China. And now, Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda received, according to him, this February a letter from President Putin, in which the Russian leader expresses his readiness to hold new negotiations on the status of the islands. At the end of April, just a few days before the inauguration of the new Russian president, Yasuo Fukuda will arrive in Moscow. Is Putin ready to give a parting gift? Citizens of the Russian Federation, as is customary in modern history, will learn about this from news releases and, as always, will agree with the decision of the President of Russia.