Russia Unveils Soviet Soldier Statue Trampling Japan's Chrysanthemum Symbol

A Soviet soldier crushing Japan's chrysanthemum, a national symbol, now stands in a 15-meter bronze monument in Russia's Far East. The statue was unveiled in Khabarovsk on the fourth, adding a new point of friction to already strained Russian-Japanese relations.

The monument weighs 30 tons and commemorates the Soviet victory over Japan's more than one-million-strong Kwantung Army, as well as the end of World War II. Local reports, including AIF Khabarovsk, said Russia had prepared the project for two years.

The unveiling followed Russia's shift from calling the occasion a "day commemorating the end of the war" to a "day commemorating victory over Japan." The change has helped frame the monument as a distinctly anti-Japanese victory memorial.

The ceremony took place as tensions were already rising over the disputed "four northern islands." Russian President Vladimir Putin visited Iturup, one of the islands claimed by both countries, last month. The visit intensified the dispute, while the new monument has further angered Japan.

The Far East and Sakhalin already have victory monuments, including a 1967 memorial to Pacific Fleet sailors in Vladivostok. Some observers have nevertheless described this as the region's first unveiling of a monument dedicated to the Soviet victory in World War II. The ceremony included Khabarovsk Governor Dmitry Demeshin and Nikolai Ovsiенко, deputy chairman of Russia's Military Historical Society and an official in a presidential humanitarian body.