Russia's President Vladimir Putin said he's received "signals" suggesting Japan may be ready to sign a peace treaty to formally end the second World War.
Mr Putin was speaking more than an hour into a media conference with hundreds of journalists in Moscow today.
Russia had, in the form of the Soviet Union, seized a group of islands from Japan at the end of the war - and the dispute over the chain's sovereignty has prevented the two countries from signing a formal peace treaty since then.
In 2010, then Russian president Dmitry Medvedev became the first Russian leader to visit the islands, which are known in Russia as the Southern Kurils and in Japan as the Northern Territories.
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Bloomberg