A Russian military expert has raised the spectre of a nuclear attack on Japan over a territorial dispute dating back to the end of the Second World War. According to Pravda, the Russian newspaper, Tokyo is not prepared to accept that the Kuril Islands belong to Russia, and that "Washington may want to take advantage of the Russia-Japan territorial dispute to force Moscow to use nuclear weapons".
Bloomberg, the news outlet, separately reported earlier this month that the Soviet Union, which declared war on Japan days before Emperor Hirohito announced his country’s surrender in 1945 - after being struck by two US atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki - seized the islands off the north-eastern coast of Hokkaido, expelled all 17,000 Japanese residents and has held the land ever since.
The islands are known as the Northern Territories in Japan and the Southern Kurils in Russia. Japan’s official position is that the islands - home to rich fishing grounds - are an inherent part of its territory and are under illegal occupation.
