Islands of dispute
Off the northern coast of Japan, a chain of islands is at the centre of a long-running dispute between Russia and Japan that has held up a treaty to bring a formal end to World War Two. Russian residents hope a diplomatic solution will lure tourists and boost investment in infrastructure.
“We need to build, if not Disneyland, then something that will make people come here,” local teacher and journalist Gennadey Berezyuk, 63, said outside Yuzhno-Kurilsk, the main settlement on the island of Kunashir.
The rusty hulk of a ship is seen partly immersed in water off the coast of the island of Shikotan.
Cows sit in the evening sun on a beach outside Yuzhno-Kurilsk.
Tourists walk past volcanic rock formation of Cape Stolbchaty outside Yuzhno-Kurilsk.
A pig stands on the beach to eat seaweed.
Fishermen repair nets on the shore of the Okhotsk Sea on the island of Kunashir.
People stand on the deck of the Polaris ferry as it approaches the island of Iturup.
"We are two very different peoples with regards to language and culture, so getting to know each other means that geographical boundaries disappear," said Alexander Vygovsky, Director of the House of Russian-Japanese Friendship.
A woman hangs up laundry in the centre of Yuzhno-Kurilsk.
"If we manage to merge our natural park with the Shiretoko World Heritage Site (on the Japanese island of Hokkaido) and bring it under the auspices of UNESCO, then no one will be able to build any industry here,” said Alexander Kisleiko, director of the Kurile Nature Reserve.
Boys play football after school.
"We don't have to argue about whether these islands are Japanese or Russian," said pensioner Grigory Andreevich. “We have to live according to the treaties that exist today.”
The evening sun breaks through the trees behind a tombstone at an historical Japanese cemetery in Yuzhno-Kurilsk.
