OREANDA-NEWS  Russia will consider Tokyo's protests on the Southern Kuril Islands as interference in Moscow's internal affairs, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said at a briefing.

In July, the Japanese government sent a protest to Russia in connection with the trip of Deputy Prime Minister - Presidential Envoy to the Far Eastern Federal District Yuri Trutnev to Iturup Island.

"The Southern Kuril Islands are part of the Russian Federation following the results of the Second World War. In view of this fact - absolutely indisputable - any relevant so-called Tokyo protests will be further considered by us as an attempt to interfere in internal affairs and as a violation of the fundamental principles of the UN Charter," Zakharova said at a briefing.

Relations between Russia and Japan have been overshadowed for many years by the absence of a peace treaty. In 1956, the USSR and Japan signed a Joint Declaration in which Moscow agreed to consider the possibility of transferring Habomai and Shikotan to Japan after the conclusion of a peace treaty, and the fate of Kunashir and Iturup was not touched upon. The USSR hoped that the Joint Declaration would put an end to the dispute, while Japan considered the document only part of the solution to the problem, without renouncing claims to all the islands.

Subsequent negotiations led to nothing, and a peace treaty was never signed after the end of World War II. Serious opposition arose from the United States, which threatened that if Japan agreed to transfer only two of the four islands to it, this would affect the process of returning Okinawa to Japanese sovereignty (the Agreement on the Return of Okinawa to Japan entered into force in 1972). Moscow's position is that the islands became part of the USSR following the Second World War and the sovereignty of the Russian Federation over them is beyond doubt.