MOSCOW, Aug. 15 -- For eighty-one years, no Russian president had set foot on the disputed Kuril Islands. Vladimir Putin changed that on Tuesday, not to negotiate or invite Japan to the table, but to stand on Iturup Island among fish-processing workers and schoolchildren and make visible what Moscow has always maintained: these are Russian islands, and they will remain so.

The visit, Putin's first to the four southernmost islands of the Kuril chain since taking power more than two decades ago, lasted a single day. He toured a fish-processing facility, a local hospital, and a school, meeting with Sakhalin Governor Valery Limarenko and, in Putin's own characterisation, engaging with Russian citizens who live there. Tokyo called it "absolut...