Russian President Vladimir Putin visited the Kuril Islands on Thursday, exacerbating political tension between Russia and Japan over the disputed island chain.

• Japan claims that Russia occupies the territory. Both nations have claimed it since the Japanese Empire fell in 1945 and the Soviet Union annexed the islands and deported their 17,000 Japanese residents.
• The dispute over the Kuril Islands (referred to as the Chishima Islands in Japanese) is the single substantive reason that Japan has never signed a formal World War ii peace treaty with Russia in 81 years and counting.

Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said the visit “offends the sentiments of the Japanese people and is absolutely unacceptable.” She also said it made it harder to “restore relations in the medium to long term.”

• Japanese Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi summoned Russian Ambassador Nikolay Nozdrev and told him to reassert that the islands belong to Japan based on their history and on international law.

This is just one of Russia and Japan’s numerous disagreements over the past 150 years, which have ranged from Manchuria to sanctions.

However, a prophecy found in Ezekiel 38 indicates that these different, powerful, proximate and somewhat antagonistic peoples will actually become world war allies, uniting with China and other Asian nations into a superpower opposing the United States and the West. Russia and China in Prophecy states:

Russia, China and Japan will likely combine in Asian alliances, with the ultimate intention of forcing the U.S. out of the Russian “sphere of influence” and out of the western Pacific. Then, as has been the strategy of the EU, Asian political and economic cooperation will ultimately progress to a military and security alliance.

To understand which prophecies apply to the current situation in east Asia, including which peoples in the Bible equate to Japan, Russia, China and other nations, read chapter 5 of Russia and China in Prophecy.