Russia is open to holding foreign ministerial talks with Japan if Tokyo so desires, a Japanese lawmaker said during a visit to Moscow on Monday.
Muneo Suzuki said Deputy Foreign Minister Andrey Rudenko suggested during their meeting the same day that such talks may be possible on the fringes of ASEAN-related events in the Philippines in July.
Suzuki is an upper house member of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party with longstanding ties with Russia.
Relations between Japan and Russia have soured amid Russia’s war against Ukraine, with Tokyo imposing economic sanctions on Moscow in concert with European countries and the United States.
Foreign ministers of the countries that make up the Association of Southeast Asian Nations meet periodically among themselves and with their counterparts from partner countries.
If realized, it would be the first in-person meeting between the Japanese and Russian foreign ministers since September 2021.
As a precondition to resuming ministerial contact, however, Rudenko told Suzuki that Japan would need to take “concrete measures” showing it has abandoned its “hostile Russia policy,” according to the Russian Foreign Ministry.
Japan and Russia have an unresolved territorial dispute over a cluster of islands off Hokkaido that were seized from Japan by the Soviet Union in the closing days of World War II in 1945. The issue has prevented the two countries from signing a peace treaty officially concluding the war.
Russia has responded to Japan’s sanctions by suspending all negotiations toward concluding the peace treaty, plunging the bilateral ties to their lowest point in decades. There has been no high-level political contact between Tokyo and Moscow.
© KYODO
