Moscow – Russian President Vladimir Putin has suggested that his country will like to construct a ground transport link between the Russian island of Sakhalin and the Japanese island of Hokkaido.
According to comments carried by state media, there are already plans to build a bridge to connect Sakhalin with Russia’s continental mainland, Putin says on Thursday at an economic forum in the port city of Vladivostok.
Putin, who met with Japanese leader Shinzo Abe at the forum, said the Sakhalin-mainland transport route could be extended to Hokkaido.
Russian officials previously suggested that a bridge or tunnel could connect Sakhalin and Hokkaido, across a distance of about 40 kilometres.
Abe said at the forum that it was high time Russia and Japan signed a peace treaty to formally end
the conflict between the Soviet Union and the Japanese Empire, which supported the Nazis during World War II.
The formality never took place in part because of tensions over Moscow’s refusal to return islands of the Kuril Archipelago that the Soviet Union seized during the war.
Russia had recently been trying to strengthen its economic ties with Japan, including collaboration in the Kurils, amid an overall turn eastward as Russia’s relations with the European Union soured over the Ukraine crisis.
Abe said Russia and Japan had made more progress in certain areas in the past year than in the previous 70’s. (dpa/NAN)
