JonnyM comments

YuriOtani My main point was why were the Russian jets flying so close to Japan?

Cause Sakhalin is in 30 km from Hokkaido and Kuril Islands are even closer. Its a border between two states which have no peace treaty or any kind of a military agreement. There are military troops around the border at both sides. Japanese are watching Russians, Russians are watching Japanese. Little incidents are normal in this kind of situation.

Sorry. I withdraw the question. The article says Rishiri island.

I have a question about the title of the article.

Does anybody know what is the airspace border between two countries and is it disputable too after the territorial dispute?

Cause it seems to me that if the jet-fighters entered the airspace above Kurils (claimed to be a part of Hokkaido by Japanese, so may be called Hokkaido in the article), then its a little bit different case from if they flew over Sapporo.

to YuriOtani

Could you please copy the article into a Word document, replace words "US" with "Russia" and "Russia" with "US" and read it again?

Cause I wounder what would you say if Russia were building a missile defense systems in Europe becoming an unreachable superpower. I bet you would be first screaming for breaking START treaty and launching everything to Moscow like immediately to stop those bastards, wouldn't you?

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Raymasaki

i don't see why Russia wants the northern islands

First of all they own the islands. =) What they want is a peace treaty and Japanese investments in Far-East.

Giving up with islands is considered as a defeat in diplomacy and will be responded negative by many Russians. Government doesn't want to loose its face. The agreements about territorial issues with China and Norway had been done silent, so not many voters noticed them. But as for Northern territories, Japan always keep the issue hot, so a quite agreement isn't possible.

Also, giving up with the islands is equal to giving up with a big part of Okhotsk sea, which is used very active now. Many of those crabs, shrimps, squids and salmons labeled "from Hokkaido" are actually from Russian waters in Okhotsk sea.

SamuraiBlue, This is cancelled several years ago. As well as a special option like "none of the above". You still can place a blank vote, but its just not counted. Only valid votes are counted, that makes elections be a joke, cause last ten years there was a choice between Putin, commies and a couple of clowns. So many people (especially young) just don't vote at all.

That's a little bit off-topic though.

Arthur Dumbolov

I live in Russia and I don't understand why government and military are doing this.

I know, dude. To make you vote for Putin and his big balls. They protect the borders from "enemies" and show the "kuzkina mat'" to the whole world. The world is not impressed, thats not a problem. In soviet russia military acts to impress you.

USNinJapan2

...a friendly nation in Russia's shoes would respect it. That's what the US and any number of other nations would do...

US is a friendly nation. LOL facepalm

It looks like a performance for the electoral campaign. Russian voters must know that Putin and his party have big balls. A small international military-aided scandal always works well for that. Not only in Russia. Some nations start wars for the same reason. Though, as for me its quite pathetic and meaningless act after all.