evidence: For the Russian Federation, since its conquest against the Japanese Empire at the end of World War II, the Kuril Islands have represented an island area of vital geostrategic importance for the defence of its interests in the Asia-Pacific Northwest. [...] For the Russian Federation, this particular arrangement of the Kuril Islands, as it had been previously for the Tsarist Empire and the Soviet Union (USSR), represents an indispensable space for the defence of its eastern borders. This assertion is partly confirmed by considering the conflicting Russian-Japanese relations for the control of the Kurils and Sakhalin Island between the late 1800s and the conclusion of World War II, which sanctioned Soviet dominance of this geo-maritime area, although not validated in the 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty. The effects of this non-recognition led the USSR delegates not to ratify the document, and at the same time pushed the Japanese governments that followed from 1951 until the Shinzō Abe administration (2012-2020) to ask Moscow several times for the restitution of the four southern islands of the Kuril archipelago (Habomai, Shikotan, Kunashir and Iturup), because they were part of Japanese territory until the invasion of the Red Army in August 1945.[2]