Vladimir Putin has a talent for turning geography into theatre. His recent visit to the disputed Kuril Islands was not merely a presidential tour of a hospital, a school and a fish-processing plant. It was a carefully staged reminder that Moscow intends to treat the islands as settled Russian territory, whatever Tokyo thinks of the matter.
Japan, naturally, thinks rather differently. Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi called the visit “absolutely unacceptable”, while Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi reaffirmed that the four southernmost islands are Japanese territory “both historically and under international law”. Russia, in turn, insists that the matter is closed. Both sides are therefore talking about the same rocks while inhabiting entirely different legal universes.
The dispute has a peculiar resemblance to Britain and Argentina’s argument over the Falkland Islands. In both cases, geography, history, national identity and military strategy have become inseparable. But there is an important difference: the Kurils sit beside one of the most strategically consequential regions on earth. They are not merely a symbol. They are a military and maritime asset controlling approaches to the Sea of Okhotsk and the Pacific.
That makes Putin’s visit more than a historical grievance tour. It is a message. The timing matters. Japan has aligned itself firmly with the West over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, imposed sanctions and deepened its security relationship with America and other Indo-Pacific democracies. Moscow has responded by viewing Japan less as a potential diplomatic partner and more as part of an increasingly hostile coalition.
Putin’s appearance on Iturup therefore looked rather like the geopolitical equivalent of planting a flag on the table and asking everyone else whether they had noticed. They had.
Yet Tokyo should be careful about what comes next. Japan is entirely entitled to maintain its territorial claim. Indeed, abandoning it would be politically extraordinary after generations of insisting that the Northern Territories remain Japanese. But diplomacy sometimes requires distinguishing between defending a claim and pretending that repeating it will magically change reality.
Russia has administered the islands for more than eight decades. Russian citizens live there. Moscow has invested in infrastructure and, increasingly, military facilities. Putin visiting a school does not settle sovereignty, but neither does a Japanese diplomatic protest overturn Russian control.
This is the uncomfortable lesson of territorial disputes: international law matters, but power matters too. And power is precisely what is changing in the northern Pacific.
Japan is already watching China, North Korea and Russia with increasing concern. The last thing Tokyo needs is another territorial dispute becoming an arena for military signalling. Moscow, meanwhile, would be foolish to assume that Japan's restraint is weakness. A country that spends more on defence, strengthens alliances and watches Russia's Pacific movements with growing suspicion is not likely to forget what happened in 1945—or simply shrug at Russian provocations.
The danger is not that Putin's visit will start a war. It probably will not. The greater danger is that it will make compromise politically impossible.
The Kurils have survived empires, wars, revolutions and changing borders. They can probably survive another presidential photo opportunity.
What they may not survive is the disappearance of diplomacy. The tragedy of disputed territory is that eventually the rocks become less important than the pride attached to them. At that point, nobody is negotiating over islands. They are negotiating over national honour. And honour, unlike territory, has no obvious border.
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