Russian-Japanese negotiations focus on signing a peace treaty rather than on the transfer of the southern Kuril Islands, Russian Presidential Spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said.
When asked by reporters to comment on the RBC report saying that the Kremlin refused to explore the possibility of handing over the Kuril Islands to Japan during the talks, Peskov said. "This is not the issue of the islands’ handover. The issue at hand is that painstaking work with Japanese partners on signing a peace treaty is in progress. The issue is on the agenda, and the parties are working along these lines."
The Kremlin spokesman also said that reports on the Russian-Japanese negotiations contained lots of speculation. He stressed that detailed information is not disclosed during such talks, as a rule, suggesting that it will not be provided in this case either.
"Everything that you read about Russian-Japanese relations and those issues that are currently on the table, is rather a matter of expert reasoning. They [these reports] often have nothing to do with the nature and content of the talks that are currently underway. There is a lot of speculation there [in these reports]," Peskov said, commenting on an RBC report asserting that the Kremlin had refused to explore the possibility of handing over the Kuril Islands during the talks with Japan.