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The Southern Kuril Islands (Northern Territories)
Four volcanic islands administered by Russia and claimed by Japan
Where the volcanic Kuril chain approaches Hokkaido, four islands sit at the heart of a dispute that has kept Russia and Japan from signing a peace treaty to close World War II. Russia administers Iturup, Kunashir, Shikotan, and the Habomai islets as the South Kurils, part of its Sakhalin region. Japan claims them as the Northern Territories, Etorofu, Kunashiri, Shikotan, and the Habomai group, and says they are its inherent territory, illegally occupied. The nearest Habomai islets lie within sight of Hokkaido's Nemuro Peninsula. About 20,000 Russian citizens live on the islands today. No Japanese community has lived there since the late 1940s, when Soviet authorities removed the islands' roughly 17,000 Japanese residents.
Together the four cover about 5,000 square kilometers, with Iturup and Kunashir by far the largest. They are steep, forested, and volcanic, part of the Pacific Ring of Fire, with active cones, hot springs, and fogbound coasts between the Sea of Okhotsk and the open Pacific. Iturup rises to 1,634 meters at the Stokap volcano. The main towns are Kurilsk on Iturup and Yuzhno-Kurilsk on Kunashir, and Malokurilskoye on Shikotan is a fishing port. Fishing and fish processing dominate the economy, and Russia has invested in airports, harbors, and military installations since the 2010s. The deep straits between the islands, open in winter when much of the Sea of Okhotsk freezes, give them value for Russia's Pacific Fleet.
Japan and Russia first divided the Kurils in the 1855 Treaty of Shimoda, which drew the boundary between Iturup and Urup, and in 1875 Japan received the entire chain. In August and September 1945, in the final weeks of World War II, Soviet forces took all of the Kurils. Japan renounced the Kuril Islands in the 1951 San Francisco treaty, which the Soviet Union did not sign, but argues that the four southern islands were never part of what it gave up. Russia holds that it acquired them lawfully as a result of the war. A 1956 joint declaration promised the transfer of Shikotan and the Habomai after a peace treaty, but none followed. Moscow suspended treaty talks in 2022 after Japan imposed sanctions over Ukraine, and the two sides exchanged sharp statements over the islands in 2026.