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Executive Office /
In response to journalists’ questions about Russia’s reaction to the statements made by Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan regarding President of Russia Dmitry Medvedev’s recent visit to the Kuril Islands, Presidential Aide Sergei Prikhodko said:
“A number of foreign media have quoted the Japanese Prime Minister’s words describing President of Russia Dmitry Medvedev’s visit last November to a Russian region – the Kuril Islands – as an ‘inexcusable outrage’, and in this respect I want to make the following comments.
If these are indeed the exact words that the Japanese Prime Minister spoke, he had better prepare for a tough time ahead, because what the Japanese perception calls ‘insults’, and what we call working trips by the Russian head of state will certainly continue. The Russian President visits different parts of the Russian Federation in order to address our citizens’ vital problems and interests, and has not the slightest need to receive the permission of anyone whosoever, all the more so as the Russian Federation’s sovereignty of the Kuril Islands is not a subject for revision either today or in the future.”
February 7, 2011