Russia escalates tensions with Japan in offshore missile test near disputed Kuril Islands
by Andrew Salmon · The Washington TimesSEOUL, South Korea — Russia has conducted missile tests off Japanese-claimed islands in the Northwestern Pacific, escalating a weeklong Moscow-Tokyo diplomatic row in the area.
The brouhaha ignited when Russian President Vladimir Putin made an unexpected visit to a Russian-held, Japanese-claimed island in the Kuril Chain on Aug. 13.
The disputed Kurils lie northeast of Japan’s northernmost main island, Hokkaido. Japan calls them its “Northern Territories.”
Tensions over the 810-mile-long chain are a legacy of fighting from Aug. 19 to Sept. 5, 1945, when the Soviet Union seized the four southernmost islands — then Japanese-administered and -populated.
Tokyo, which surrendered on Sept. 2, never accepted Moscow’s actions as legitimate. The closest Kuril lies under three miles from Hokkaido.
The domain shift from diplomatic to military presents an unpleasant surprise for Tokyo defense planners.
In recent years, Japan has been focusing strategic efforts on its southwestern island chain, the Ryukyus, where U.S. forces are deployed on Okinawa.
The Ryukyus are ideally sited to deter Chinese naval moves on Taiwan.
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That shift has taken place at the same time Russia-facing defenses on the northeastern island of Hokkaido have been deprioritized.
Putin’s surprise maneuvers
Late Thursday, Russian media said the Russian Pacific Fleet had conducted tests of a “Bastion” coast-defense system.
Bastions, which fire supersonic “Onik” missiles out to 497 miles, are deployed on Etorofu Island — known in Russian as Iturup Island - in the Kurils.
The flagship of Russia’s Pacific Fleet, guided-missile cruiser Varyag and a nuclear submarine also joined the exercise, media stated.
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That marks an escalation.
Mr. Putin visited Etorofu/Iturup on Aug. 13, meeting the regional governor and locals, and touring facilities: a school, a hospital and a fish-processing plant.
Tokyo, which claims the islands, responded angrily.
The move “hurts the feelings of the Japanese people and is absolutely unacceptable,” Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said on TV. “We hope that the Russian side will take the seriousness of this matter fully to heart.”
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On Aug, 14, the Chinese and Russian ambassadors to Tokyo released a joint statement pledging to resist moves to change the end-result of World War II.
On Aug. 18, Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Galuzin summoned Japanese Ambassador Akira Muto — who was confronted at the entrance to Moscow’s Foreign Ministry by a crowd of Russian media — to protest the “anti-Russia” statements by Ms. Takaichi.
He warned Mr. Muto that “Moscow reserves the right to take appropriate countermeasures.”
The Kurils offer ice-free access to Russian warships transiting between the Sea of Okhotsk and the open Pacific.
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They also provide offshore cover for Russia’s Far East Federal Territory, where strategic assets including ballistic missiles and nuclear submarines are based.
The Russian Far East is sparsely populated and lies thousands of miles from Russia’s political center of gravity, in European Russia, at the far end of long, precarious supply lines.
A quietly voiced Russian anxiety has long existed: That neighboring China, with its massive population and surging economy, could encroach on their Far Eastern terrain.
The Kurils are even more of a backwater.
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Mr. Putin, in power since 1999, had never visited the islands before last week. The only other Russian president to visit was Dmitri Medvedev in 2010, when Mr. Putin was prime minister.
The Kremlin’s considerations
At a time when Russia’s on-ground advance in Ukraine has slowed to a crawl and Kyiv’s drones are overcoming air defenses and hammering targets across the vastness of Russia, Mr. Putin needs some good news to shore up his nationalist-hawkish base.
Japan may be a soft target.
“NATO countries can turn Moscow into a pile of radioactive rubble, but are reluctant even to think about it,” said Leonid Petrov, an Asia-focused scholar of Russian descent. “Japan, on the contrary, is a victim of nuclear carnage but does not possess a single nuclear device, and that makes it an easy target for Putin’s territorial exhortations.”
Mr. Putin’s move may also be designed to test Japan’s security partners.
“Putin wants to prove to NATO and the Quad countries that he can do whatever he likes, as long as he wants, because Russia has nukes and is ready to use them,” Mr. Petrov, a visiting scholar at Australian National University, said.
NATO has been intensely wary of involvement in Ukraine. The Quad is a security dialog, rather than an alliance, comprising Australia, India, Japan and the United States.
Japan has a bilateral alliance with the U.S., which has remained above the ongoing dispute.
Russia has suffered serious losses among its western (“Zapad” or “Z”) and eastern (“Vostok” or “V”) force groupings in Ukraine.
However, its Pacific Fleet, unengaged, remains fully operational.
Any Hokkaido contingency will not be welcomed by Tokyo’s defense chiefs.
After the Soviet Union imploded, Russia’s Pacific Fleet, based at Vladivostok, fell into deep disrepair. That has been remedied, but since 2022, Moscow’s forces have been bogged down in a long, bloody war on the far western edge of the world’s largest country, in Ukraine.
Prior to last week, Japan’s deprioritization of Hokkaido in favor of the Ryukyus had looked like a safe bet.
“This was probably a bit of a surprise … questions arise about [Japan’s] emphasis on Okinawa,” said Lance Gatling, a former planning officer with U.S. Forces Japan. “They don’t have a tremendous amount of new things going into Hokkaido, though the anti-ship missile platforms being updated and sent to the southwest were originally in Hokkaido.”
In recent years, Chinese and Russian naval and aerial forces have been conducting joint exercises around Japan, in and over the East China Sea, the Sea of Japan, and in the Western Pacific.
Whether Moscow is coordinating its activities with Beijing to draw Tokyo’s focus and assets away from the southwest is unknown.
However, it would make sense given tight ties between Mr. Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping, and the joint statement both nations’ ambassadors to Tokyo made last week.
Mr. Gatling offered a more novel possibility.
“Are the Russians positioning for some distraction from the Chinese threat in the Southwest or increasing strategic pressure on Japan — or positioning themselves to make a deal?” he asked. “Russia could use Japanese money and technology to develop the Russian Far East and to offset their increasing dependence on China.”
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Andrew Salmon
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