«The four northern islands sovereignty. We intend to continue persistent negotiations on the basis of our basic position, which is the desire to sign a peace treaty after the settlement of the territorial issue — he said.
Thus, Hayashi commented on the statement of his Russian colleague at a press conference in Moscow on 14 January. Then Sergey Lavrov noted that Tokyo still recognized the results of the Second World War in the context of the Kuril Islands, making constant demarches due to visiting Russian officials and military islands of the South Kuril Islands.
Moscow and Tokyo have been consulting since the middle of the last century with the aim of developing a peace treaty following the results of the Second World War. The main obstacle on the way to this remains the disagreement over the rights to the southern part of the Kuriles. After the end of the war, the entire archipelago was included in the Soviet Union, but Japan disputes the ownership of Iturup, Kunashir, Shikotan and the group of adjacent small uninhabited islands. At the same Ministry of Foreign Affairs of of the Russian Federation has repeatedly stressed that the Russian sovereignty over these territories, which has the appropriate international legal design, is beyond doubt.