On February 2, 1946, the Kuril Islands and South Sakhalin were officially annexed to the USSR.

This became possible after two successful military operations by the Soviet troops in the framework of the war with Japan, which began on August 9, 1945.

Earlier, during the Yalta Conference in February of the same year, Joseph Stalin promised his allies to declare war on the Japanese side a few months after the end of hostilities in Europe, subject to the return of the Kuril Islands and South Sakhalin to the Soviet Union.

The agreement was enshrined in the conference documents.

The battles for South Sakhalin lasted from 11 to 25 August.

The operation was successfully carried out by the Northern Pacific Flotilla and the 16th Army under the command of Major General Leonty Cheremisov.

“In connection with the successful offensive actions of the Red Army troops, on the morning of August 11, by the decision of the commander of the Second Far Eastern Front, General of the Army Purkaev, our units went on the offensive on Sakhalin Island,” the declassified document of the Russian Defense Ministry said.

The Kuril operation lasted from August 18 to September 1.

The forces of the Second Far Eastern Front and the Pacific Fleet drove the Japanese out of the islands.

By the end of August 1945, the Red Army practically completed the process of disarming the Japanese formations.

The fact that by this time there was no enemy resistance was already indicated by the order to cancel martial law in the Far East from September 1, issued on August 29 by Marshal Alexander Vasilevsky. 

On September 2 of the same year, Japan signed the Act of Unconditional Surrender.

The Soviet Union received the southern half of Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands.

About Japan's claims

It should be noted that after the end of World War II, a peace treaty was not concluded between Japan and the USSR.

In 1951, Tokyo signed the San Francisco Peace Treaty, securing the loss of the Japanese side of rights to the Kuril Islands and parts of Sakhalin Island.

However, the Soviet Union decided not to sign this document, since it did not spell out the issue of the withdrawal of foreign troops from Japan.

In addition, it was not explained in whose favor Tokyo was abandoning the island territories.

In 1956, the parties signed a declaration, which assumed the gradual development of relations and the conclusion of a peace treaty.

To date, Tokyo officially declares that Japan's sovereignty should extend to the southern Kuril islands of Iturup, Kunashir, Shikotan and Habomai, which are part of the Russian Federation.

At the same time, the Japanese side argues its position with the terms of the Shimoda Treaty of 1855, according to which Russia ceded the Kuril Islands to Japan in exchange for trade preferences.

However, this agreement has not been legally binding for a long time.

  • Landing of Soviet troops on Shumshu island

  • © Wikimedia commons

Moscow and Tokyo started talking about signing a peace treaty again after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

In 2001, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Yoshiro Mori, then Prime Minister of Japan, agreed to further negotiate a peace treaty by "resolving the issue of ownership of the islands of Iturup, Kunashir, Shikotan and Habomai" in order to achieve "complete normalization of bilateral relations ".

However, the parties failed to come to an agreement on the adoption of such a document.

Meanwhile, Tokyo regularly recalls its claims to the Kuril Islands.

Thus, on the official website of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, a map with the route of the Olympic flame appeared, on which the southern Kuril islands of Kunashir, Shikotan, Iturup and Habomai were designated as part of the Japanese prefecture of Hokkaido.

The Russian Foreign Ministry called such a step "unauthorized".

As Maria Zakharova, spokeswoman for the Russian foreign policy department, said, the actions of the Japanese side cannot change reality and call into question Russian sovereignty over the islands.

In addition, in the updated White Paper of the Japanese Ministry of Defense - a defense report published by Tokyo last summer, the Japanese side calls the islands of the Kuril ridge "northern territories" and "original territories of Japan."

"Claims are absolutely unfounded"

As the military historian Boris Yulin noted in an interview with RT, the official annexation of the Kuril Islands and Southern Sakhalin to the USSR on February 2, 1946 became the fixation by the Soviet Union of agreements with the allies that the liberated region would become Soviet territory.

In addition, Yulin stressed that "Japan's claims against Russia are absolutely unfounded."

“The Shimoda treatise has long since lost its force - all border conditions were revised several times.

In particular, they were crossed out by Japan by the Portsmouth Peace Treaty, according to which, after the Russo-Japanese War, Tokyo took South Sakhalin for itself, ”he said.

As the leading researcher of the Institute of Far East of the Russian Academy of Sciences Yevgeny Kim reminded, the anti-Hitler coalition, which included the USSR, was directed not only against Hitler, but also against his main ally - Japan.

“Therefore, the USSR and the allied states made a decision that Japan would be punished for aggression in Asia and the Pacific.

With regard to military operations, Japan has undergone complete and unconditional surrender.

This means that the state as a subject of international law disappears.

And instead, another country appears, ”the expert said.

Kim also said that the victory of the USSR in the war with Japan made it possible to move to a peaceful life and create the foundation of a modern system of international relations, in the center of which is the United Nations.

“The UN Charter fixes: everything that was decided after the Second World War by the winners - the founders of this organization, is not subject to revision.

Every state that joined the UN signed its charter with this provision.

This is one of the reasons why Tokyo cannot extend its sovereignty to those islands that have passed to the Soviet Union, ”he said.

From the point of view of geopolitics, the USSR returned the territory that, according to various agreements, belonged to Russia in the 19th century, Kim said.

“The Soviet Union restored historical justice.

Now the Kuril Islands and South Sakhalin have an important strategic position, since they actually turn the Sea of ​​Okhotsk into an inland water body.

Russia does not allow foreign military courts to appear there.

The Russian Federation ensures the protection of its borders and the strategic interests of the state, ”he stressed.

As Yulin clarified, the fact that the Sea of ​​Okhotsk was completely inside the Soviet territories is important both in geostrategic and economic terms.

  • Soviet transport ships on the way to South Sakhalin

  • RIA News

“Firstly, it improved the basing of our Pacific Fleet, increased the country's security, and secondly, there are a lot of fish in these waters,” the expert explained.

At the same time, Kim said that Russia "does not intend to go to the provocations of the Japanese side, which all the time wants to appropriate foreign territories."

“Tokyo has territorial claims to other neighbors, for example, Korea and China,” Yulin recalled.

Experts also noted that Japan "can make claims to Russia as much as it wants," however, according to the Constitution of the Russian Federation, adopted by a popular vote, it is forbidden to even negotiate the transfer of Russian territories.

“This has already been equated with extremism with appropriate punishment.

And no president of Russia will ever agree to cede any Russian lands.

It is prohibited by the Constitution of the country, ”concluded Kim.