Summit concludes with Russia-Japan ties getting a bit warmer

Tokyo

JAPANESE Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Russian President Vladimir Putin ended a two-day summit in Japan on Friday with an agreement to step up economic cooperation between the countries but no real progress was made on solving a territorial dispute that has dogged relations since World War II.

The summit, however, pointed to warmer ties between Tokyo and Moscow at a time when Russia is feeling isolated because of sanctions imposed by G7 countries over its annexation of the Crimea. Mr Abe was the first G7 leader to meet President Putin since the annexation.

This week's summit also "sent a signal to China", about dominance in the region, sources said.

"Russians feel China has a lot of leverage over them because China's economy is doing much better and they have a long frontier with China," Kent Calder, director of the Reischauer Centre for East Asian Studies at Johns Hopkins SAIS…