oup, known in Japan as the
"Northern Territories" and in Russia as the "Southern Kurils,"
occupied by the Soviet Union in 1945, now administered by Russia,
and claimed by Japan, remains the primary sticking point to signing
a peace treaty formally ending World War II hostilities; Russia and
Georgia agree on delimiting all but small, strategic segments of the
land boundary and the maritime boundary; OSCE observers monitor
volatile areas such as the Pankisi Gorge in the Akhmeti region and
the Kodori Gorge in Abkhazia; Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Russia
signed equidistance boundaries in the Caspian seabed but the
littoral states have no consensus on dividing the water column;
Russia and Norway dispute their maritime limits in the Barents Sea
and Russia's fishing rights beyond Svalbard's territorial limits
within the Svalbard Treaty zone; various groups in Finland advocate
restoration of Karelia (Kareliya) and other areas ceded to the
Soviet Union following the Second World War but the Finnish
Government asserts no territorial demands; in May 2005, Russia
recalled its signatures to the 1996 border agreements with Estonia
(1996) and Latvia (1997), when the two Baltic states announced
issuance of unilateral declarations referencing Soviet occupation
and ensuing territorial losses; Russia demands better treatment of
ethnic Russians in Estonia and Latvia; Estonian citizen groups
continue to press for realignment of the boundary based on the 1920
Tartu Peace Treaty that would bring the now divided ethnic Setu
people and parts of the Narva region within Estonia; Lithuania and
Russia committed to demarcating their boundary in 2006 in accordance
with the land and maritime treaty ratified by Russia in May 2003 and
by Lithuania in 1999; Lithuania operates a simplified transit regime
for Russian nationals traveling from the Kaliningrad coastal exclave
into Russia, while still conforming, as an EU member state with an
EU external border, where strict Schengen border rules apply;
preparations for the demarcation delimitation of land boundary with
Ukraine have commenced; the dispute over the boundary between Russia
and Ukraine through the Kerch Strait and Sea of Azov remains
unresolved despite a December 2003 framework agreement and on-going
expert-level discussions; Kazakhstan and Russia boundary
delimitation was ratified on November 2005 and field demarcation
sho