(Reuters) – Japan’s “anti-Russian course” makes peace treaty talks impossible, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Andrei Rudenko said in comments published by the state TASS news agency on Tuesday.
Russia and Japan have not formally ended World War Two hostilities because of their standoff over islands, seized by the Soviet Union at the end of the war, just off Japan’s northernmost island of Hokkaido.
The islands are known in Russia as the Kurils and in Japan as the Northern Territories.
“It is absolutely obvious that it is impossible to discuss the signing of such a document (a peace treaty) with a state that takes openly unfriendly positions and allows itself direct threats against our country,” Rudenko told TASS in an interview.
“We are not seeing signs of Tokyo moving away from the anti-Russian course and any attempt to rectify the situation.”
Russia withdrew from its talks with Japan in March last year, following Japanese sanctions over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Japan reacted angrily to the talks, calling Moscow’s move “unfair” and “completely unacceptable”.
(Reporting in Melbourne by Lidia Kelly; Editing by Stephen Coates)
