At a press briefing, Kishida informed that during a telephone conversation with Putin, the two officials agreed to settle the issue of the status of four islands, now controlled by Russia.

The Japanese head of Government said that he had expressed his desire to develop Japan-Russia relations in a mutually beneficial manner, while Putin declared his intention to continue dialogue on a range of bilateral issues.

Japan and Russia have a decades-old territorial dispute concerning the sovereignty of the four islands, which were seized by the then Soviet Union following Japan’s surrender in 1945 at the end of World War II.

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