Russian President Vladimir Putin and Japanese premier Shinzo Abe on Thursday launched a hot spring summit aimed at resolving a dispute over a group of islands that has prevented the countries from formally ending their World War II hostilities.
Abe is hosting Putin in his ancestral city of Nagato in hopes of achieving a breakthrough over the territory off Japan’s northern coast seized by Soviet troops in 1945.
The four islands are known as the Southern Kurils in Russia and the Northern Territories in Japan, and the dispute has been a thorn in relations for more than seven decades.
Abe would like to …read more
Source: Free Malaysia Today
