By Ingrid "Shortwave" Frost
Three hundred kilometers out over open water, Russian missiles found their marks Thursday — and Tokyo took notice.
Russia's Pacific fleet said it fired Bastion surface-to-ship missiles from Etorofu, the largest island in a chain Moscow calls the Kuril Islands and Japan calls its Northern Territories, simulating an attack on enemy vessels, the Guardian reports. All targets, roughly 300 kilometers out, were hit.
Japan criticized the drills, which came just a week after Russian President Vladimir Putin visited the disputed islands himself, according to the Guardian's account. The territory has been a sore point between Moscow and Tokyo since the closing days of World War Two, when Soviet forces seized the islands from Japan — a dispute that has kept the two nations from ever signing a formal peace treaty.
Neither Moscow nor Tokyo appears eager to let the argument rest. For Russia, the islands anchor its Pacific military posture. For Japan, they remain unfinished business from a war that ended eighty-one years ago. The missile test, coming so soon after a presidential visit, reads less like routine drills and more like a message — one Tokyo says it received loud and clear.
FILED FROM SOMEWHERE WITH BAD COFFEE -
— Compiled from reporting by The Guardian.
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