The chess game of the Kurili islands

Shinzo Abe seems to want to extend a hand to Vladimir Putin over the islands, a decades long dispute between Russia and Japan. But accord is far broader: Tokyo could get to review the historic military agreement with the United States. Internal opposition weighs on both leaders.

Moscow (AsiaNews) - Since last November 16, when President Putin met Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Singapore, a debate has been taking place in Russia on the possible "peace agreement" that closes the seventy-year dispute over the 60-archipelago Kurili islands, suspended at the northern limits of the Pacific between Russia and Japan. Indications point to a possible signed agreement by June 2019, when Putin will travel to Japan for the G-20 meeting, even if pessimists believe that the signing will take place much later, at the Tokyo Olympics in 2020 .

After the meeting with Putin, Shinzo Abe himself declared that he was ready to conclude the process begun with the Soviet-Japanese joint declaration of 1956. In it the USSR undertook to give two islands, Habomai and Shikotan back to the Japanese; Japan later also demanded the return of two other islands, Kunashir and Iturup, and the agreement remained frozen. Now the Japanese premier is also willing to make an official visit to Russia.

Shinzo Abe reportedly assured Putin that NATO bases will not be installed in Kurils, a fundamental condition posed by the Russians, after the rumors began circulating in 2016 following some statements by the Japanese security secretary Siotaro Ati. Abe would have explained that in the agreements between the USA and Japan there was no obligation for military bases without Tokyo’s consent.

In reality, the peace agreement does not seem to be the real priority of this rapprochement between Russia and Japan, given the great distance from the war (for example, there are no peace agreements between Japan and China and South Korea ). Japan could still obtain a territorial advantage, based on the promises of Khrushchev in 1956, then denied by the aggressive positions of the Japanese Prime Minister Nobusuke Kisi, the grandfather of Shinzo Abe himself.

The grandson could make up for the lacunae of his progenitor, or better relations with a neutral state, since the failure of the agreement was the cause for the military alliance between Japan and the United States, until then the deadly enemy of the second World War. Even today about a hundred American military installations are located in Japan.

Tokyo also today supports the anti-Russian initiatives of Americans and Europeans, from the sanctions to the signing of documents of the G-7 condemnation of Moscow, the installation of new technologies of the global American defense system, and the participation in the NATO maneuvers in the Baltic countries, which irritate the Russians so much. Abe's promise not to "arm" the Kuriles against the Russians could imply a large Japanese disengagement from the NATO defensive system, and above all the offer to the Russians of a possible way out of the grip of sanctions.

In Russia, however, the Putin openings to the Japanese have aroused considerable reactions, especially among the inhabitants of the Sachalin islands (the Russian islands north of Kurili), who even took to the streets to demonstrate against the president, collecting signatures to block the agreement. The Russians of the Sachalin and Kurili claim that the territorial changes, according to the law of 1990, must be subjected to a referendum among the population of the territories concerned, and they build on the example of the Crimea in 2014, when the Russians themselves - violating the international conventions - "solicited" the referendum that led to the annexation (and Western sanctions).

It is the same official doctrine of Pointillism that is being questioned at this juncture, where the "sovereign" superiority of internal laws and of the popular will is claimed on every type of agreement or external legislation. Moreover, there have been strong negative reactions among the opposition parties in Japan, who have called the prime minister to explain to Parliament the terms of the agreement that is being prepared. In general, the perplexities about possible new relations between Russia and Japan are strong in all Japanese public opinion.