Japan’s request to return the entire southern Kuril Islands means that it will never actually return them. This is stated in the memoirs of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who was killed last year. excerpt from the book TASS.
“History has proven that the insistence on the full return of the four islands did not lead to any progress,” Abe said.
It was clarified that Abe did not believe Japan was making concessions when a dialogue began in November 2018 between Moscow and Tokyo about signing a peace agreement based on the 1956 Soviet-Japanese declaration. Then the USSR was ready to cede Shikotan and several small uninhabited islands on the Little Kuril ridge to Japan, provided that the Japanese side actually took the islands after the signing of a peace treaty.
Former Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida aforementionedthat the position of the country’s authorities regarding the islands forming the south of the Kurils will not change in the future.