Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed with Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu the possibility of using Russian naval forces in various directions in connection with the situation with the country’s “tumultuous environment” in many directions, TASS reports.

“Our environment is very turbulent in many areas, saturated with conflict situations, regional conflicts. We all know the geography of these regional conflicts well. This is what it was all about,” Kremlin spokesman Dmytro Peskov explained Putin’s words on Monday.

He stated that the President of Russia met with Serhii Soigu on Sunday and Monday.

“Actually, Putin also met with Shoigu yesterday and today [ministrul Apărării] he was on the report,” Dmytro Peskov explained.

His comments came after Russian state media reported that during Putin’s meeting with the head of the Russian armed forces, the Russian president noted that, among other things, the country’s naval forces “of course can be used in conflicts, in any direction “. “

Putin also asked Shoigu to take this into account.

Russia has put its fleet in the Pacific Ocean on alert

Vladimir Putin’s comments came after Russia’s Pacific Fleet was put on high alert for an unannounced lightning inspection last Friday.

“The main purpose of this inspection is to increase the ability of the Armed Forces to repel the aggression of a potential enemy from the ocean and the sea,” Shoigu said in an intervention on state television.

He clarified that during the inspection, the enemy landed on the Russian island of Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands further south, part of the archipelago claimed by Japan in a dispute dating back to the end of World War II.

These military maneuvers took place after the Russian Ministry of Defense announced the dispatch of two strategic bombers for a 7-hour flight over the Sea of ​​Japan on March 21, on the eve of Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kisida’s official visit to Kyiv.

Russia said the Tu-95MS warplane had carried out a “scheduled flight” accompanied by fighter jets, and that the flight was carried out in strict compliance with international law over neutral waters.

Growing tensions between Russia and Japan

Although the territorial dispute over the Kuril Islands has been going on for almost 7 decades, tensions between the two countries have sharply increased since Japan joined the sanctions imposed by the West against Moscow after the start of the war against Ukraine.

The Soviet Union occupied these islands in the final days of the conflict after launching a large-scale military offensive against Japan, which some historians believe contributed at least as much to Emperor Hirohito’s decision to order the surrender as did the dropping of the nuclear bombs on Japan. the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, USA.

Moscow and Tokyo have never signed a peace treaty since the end of World War II, only an armistice, as the Russian invasion took place despite a military non-aggression pact signed between the two sides in 1941.

In 1951, Japan relinquished sovereignty over some of the islands as part of the San Francisco Treaty, but says this never applied to the islands of Itorofu, Kunasiri, Shikotan and Habomai, which are part of the archipelago.

Russia ended talks on a formal peace treaty with Japan on March 21 last year after Tokyo imposed broad sanctions against it, including exports of semiconductors, a vital component for Russia’s defense industry.

A month later, the Foreign Ministry in Tokyo called four small islands in the northern part of the Kuril archipelago “illegally occupied” by Russia after Japan revoked Russia’s top donor status two days earlier.

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