>>4261279The Ainu people are Asian as fuck, most likely descending from mainland China (or Mongolia) and settled in northern Japan 1,000 years ago. Up until 1945, the Kuril Islands and southern Sakhalin were politically part of Japan and had been for more than a century. Russia kicked out the Yamato Japanese that were on the islands, including fishermen and former military personnel and their families, just like they cleared out the Kalingrad Oblast of hundreds of thousands of ethnic Germans, it's just not the best way to do diplomacy against a defeated enemy (it's part of the reason most Japanese people have a mostly negative view of Russia today).
