Reaffirming Russia's Remote Control: Exploring Kremlin Influence on Television Coverage of Russian-Japanese Relations and the Southern Kuril Islands Territorial Dispute
Journal: Demokratizatsiya The Journal of Post-Soviet Democratization
Year: 2014

A marked improvement in Russian-Japanese relations began in 2012. Since 1945, conflict over the sovereignty of four islands that Russia calls the Southern Kurils and that Japan refers to as the Northern Territories had inhibited ties. Stalin occupied the four islands, situated between the Japanese island of Hokkaido and Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula, during the closing phase of World War II.1 For the nearly 70 years since then, the dispute has prevented Russia and Japan from signing a formal peac