On Tuesday, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will arrive in Moscow for talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin. It will be their 25th meeting in five years. Russia’s growing international isolation has not affected its relationship with its eastern neighbor: unlike other Group of Seven governments, Tokyo has been mostly silent on the Kremlin’s domestic human rights abuses, its military excursions in Syria and its continued belligerence toward Ukraine. According to Putin’s press office, the agenda of the upcoming summit includes “bilateral political, economic and humanitarian cooperation … (and) questions relating to the conclusion of a peace agreement between the two countries.
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A picture taken on Dec. 12, 2016 shows the town of Kurilsk on the island of Iturup.
