Image copyright AFP Image caption In 2010, the then President of Russia Dmitry Medvedev visited the Kuriles

Frants Klintsevich, Deputy Chairman of the Defense and Security Committee of the Federation Council, announced the construction of a naval base in the Kuriles. This is not the first mention of a military facility on the islands, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu spoke about this earlier, but for the first time they started talking about this project in the present tense.

"The decision has been made. It is under implementation," Klintsevich said, without specifying exactly where the military facility would be located.

Perhaps he had in mind the island of Matua - a small piece of land in the center of the Kuril chain. In 2016, Defense Minister Shoigu said that Russia intended not only to restore, but also to actively exploit this island.

By that time, a large expedition of the Russian Geographical Society and the Pacific Fleet (Pacific Fleet) had already visited the island. The second expedition began in the summer of 2017 and continues to this day.

• Russian senator: the decision on the naval base in the Kuril Islands has been made
• Will Putin agree to the return of the Kuril Islands to Japan?
• Japan regrets the deployment of Russian missiles in the Kuriles

"Specialists conducted more than 1,000 laboratory studies on physical, chemical and biological indicators, made more than 200 measurements of the relief and the external environment. Radiation and chemical reconnaissance was also carried out, the fortifications of the island and more than 100 historical objects were examined. Divers carried out work on a hydrographic study of bays and bays of the island of Matua," the RGS website says.

Image copyright Google Image caption Perhaps the naval base will be located on Matua Island

The reports of the expeditions talk a lot about the study of marine invertebrates and algae, the study of the activity of the Sarychev Peak volcano, but if the Ministry of Defense is really going to build a base on this island, then hydrographic studies of the relief are most likely especially important for it. seabed and studying the remains of Japanese military installations.

The new base will be able to receive any ships, including the first rank, Klintsevich said on Thursday, without specifying which ships will be based at this facility.

The ships of the first rank include aircraft carriers, destroyers, missile and anti-submarine cruisers, and nuclear submarines. For such deep draft boats, it is really necessary to carefully prepare the seabed.

Belonging to some Kuril Islands Russia is challenged by Japan. They went to the Soviet Union at the very end of World War II, when Soviet amphibious assaults landed on the islands. The ownership of some of the islands was not secured by international treaties.

Japan claims the Iturup, Kunashir, Shikotan islands of the Kuril ridge and a group of small Habomai islands, referring to the Shimonoseki Treaty of 1855. The island of Matua, which Shoigu spoke about, does not belong to the disputable group - it is located in another part of the ridge, in its central region.

Russia insists that the islands belong to it, referring to the inadmissibility of revising the results of World War II.

Island as base

The Kuril Islands are located in a strategically important area: they separate the Sea of ​​Okhotsk from Pacific Ocean, as if blocking the exit to it from south coast Russian Far East.

During the Second World War, a powerful system of fortifications, airfields, and naval bases was built on the islands. One of the objects was located just on Matua - there are still coastal concrete fortifications on the island, the remains of an airfield, warehouses, shelters.

Image copyright Google Image caption There are traces of Japanese field fortifications on Matua.

In Soviet times and until 2001, there was a frontier post on the island, but in recent years the island has remained uninhabited.

At present, the 18th Machine-Gun Artillery Division (the only such unit in the Russian army) is deployed on the Kuril Islands with reinforcement units on Iturup and Kunashir. Recently, coastal missile systems "Bal" and "Bastion", as well as anti-aircraft systems "Buk" were placed on the islands. The Bastion complex was located on the island of Iturup, and the Bal complex was located on Kunashir.

Matua is not the most comfortable place to live and even to build a military base. Strong winds blow on the island, there are no large convenient bays on the coast. Finally, all Northern part a small island - a volcano that last erupted quite recently - in 2009.

The island is located at a great distance from supply bases, and communication with it, especially during the winter months, is difficult due to the fact that the Sea of ​​Okhotsk freezes in this place.

Image copyright NASA Image caption Eruption of the Sarychev Peak volcano on the island of Matua in 2009

In any case, building a large base on it will be extremely costly.

However, Russia seems ready to spend. On the one hand, the Kremlin has long sought to expand its military presence in the oceans. And the Pacific region, which has attracted more and more attention in recent years, is extremely important for Russia.

For example, one of the two landing helicopter carriers that Russia intended to purchase from France was to be based in the Pacific Fleet.

"When I served in the Far East, the issue of deploying a ship formation of the Pacific Fleet in the Kuril Islands was considered. It is advantageous to create a base on the islands for the sole reason - direct access to the ocean. Of the places that were identified as suitable for it by geometry, the difficulties were as follows. First - difficult ice conditions in winter. The second is high and low tides of about six meters. The third is strong winds," Admiral Vladimir Valuev, former commander of the Baltic Fleet, said in an interview with RIA Novosti.

In the days of the USSR, which had a larger Pacific Fleet than Russia now, a large military base was never built on the Kuril Islands.

Russia's second goal is to gain a foothold on the Kuril Islands themselves. The unresolved issue with the Kuril Islands hinders the development of relations between the two countries, each time Moscow and Tokyo raise it and obviously greatly unnerves both sides.

What base can Russia afford?

Speaking about the scale of the future facility, Senator Franz Klintsevich said that the new base will be able to receive any ships, including the first rank.

At the same time, Klintsevich used the word "base", that is, he meant a rather large object, which should include not only berths, but also infrastructure for Maintenance ships, ideally - a dock and a shipyard, barracks to accommodate the crews and personnel of the base, air defense units and an airfield.

And all this - on an island with an area of ​​​​52 square kilometers, a significant part of which is occupied by a volcano.

• Tartus: the "gas station" that dreams of becoming a base

Vasily Kashin, a senior researcher at the Center for Comprehensive European and International Studies at the Higher School of Economics, told the BBC that as a result, only a small ship logistics center could appear on Matua, in Syria, and Russia would invest money in the already existing bases of the Pacific fleet.

There are five of them in the Far East - in Vladivostok, Fokino, Vilyuchinsk (nuclear submarines are based there), Sovetskaya Gavan and Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky.

“Maybe it will be a harbor where there will be several piers, again we don’t know how many; there will be an icebreaker and a couple of tugboats, and some small forces will be constantly deployed,” he said.

At the same time, Kashin noted that even if, for example, a large anti-submarine ship (of the first rank) can approach the island, it remains to be seen how many such ships can be serviced there at the same time and how much service they can receive there.

The scope of the current until 2015 FTP "Socio-economic development of the Kuril Islands for 2007-2015" is 21 billion rubles.

The bulk of this amount is allocated from the federal budget. The Sakhalin Region also plans to attract funds from private investors for the development of the Kuriles. Private investments in the economy of the islands now amount to a billion rubles a year, and by 2015 they will increase to 6 billion. details about the new infrastructure of the Kuril Islands (many photos) The Kuril Islands include 30 large and many small islands. The population lives permanently only in Paramushir, Iturup, Kunashir and Shikotan. The population of the Kuril Islands 18,735 people Kunashir island- most south island Large ridge of the Kuril Islands. The population is about 8000 people. Yuzhno-Kurilsk- the administrative center of the South Kuril district.


social housing

In August 2012, a ceremony was held in Yuzhno-Kurilsk to hand over warrants and keys to new apartments. The 10-apartment building was built with funds from the regional and local budgets under one of the regional programs.
House of Culture (medical and educational expedition "Frontiers of Russia", August 2010)
New Kindergarten Port of Yuzhno-Kurilsk New Deep-Water Berth

The commissioning of modern deep-sea berthing complexes in Kunashir and Iturup will bring to a qualitatively new level transport infrastructure in the Kuriles and improve the quality of life on the islands. Motor ship "Igor Farkhutdinov" moored for the first time at the new berth (February 2011)
Funded by the federal program for the socio-economic development of the Kuril Islands and the budget Sakhalin region construction in progress sea ​​station on the territory of the constructed berthing complex in the South Kuril Bay. In this building, in addition to passengers, various services will be located - a border checkpoint, a customs post, port supervision, administration and a control room. seaport. Completion of construction is planned for 2012.

Mendeleevo Airport The airport was built by the Japanese when the island of Kunashir was still under the control of Japan and since then it has not been practically rebuilt. In 2006, it was closed due to the complete deterioration of the infrastructure and the destruction of the runway. During the reconstruction, within the framework of the Federal Target Program for the socio-economic development of the Kuril Islands, a new passenger terminal, taxiways, new apron, runway (runway), landing system and lighting equipment. The island operates Mendeleevskaya GeoTPP(geothermal power plant), which provides the island with heat and electricity. The energy of a volcano as a source of heat and light for a person is the principle of operation of this station. Commissioning in 2007 of the second stage of the station provided 100% of the heat demand in Yuzhno-Kurilsk. The planned modernization of the Mendeleevskaya GeoTPP will increase its capacity from 3.6 MW to 7.4 MW.
On about. Kunashir has two fish processing plants - LLC PKF "South Kuril Fish Processing Plant" and LLC "Delta". of 25 people successfully copes with large volumes of incoming raw materials.In 2011, the first kilometers of asphalt were laid on Kunashir Island.

Iturup Island- the island of the southern group of the Great Ridge of the Kuril Islands, the most large island archipelago. Population - 6387 people. Kurilsk is the administrative center of the island. In the village of Kurilsk, a modern microdistrict "Severny" has been built in recent years. Within its boundaries, it is planned to build a large palace of culture and sports, under the roof of which there will be a sports complex, a swimming pool, a house of culture and other institutions. In 2006, a modern fish processing complex "Reidovo" was launched on the island..
Six air-freezing chambers ensure the release of 74 tons of finished frozen fish products per day.
On about. Iturup also has a fish processing plant "Yasny", equipped with a unique freezer tunnel for air freezing fish, which allows you to continuously freeze 210 tons of finished fish products per day. There is a caviar shop, where 3 tons of caviar are produced per day. In addition, a salting shop with a capacity of 25 tons per day and a refrigerator with a capacity of 2300 tons of one-time storage. There are several more fishing enterprises, the largest of which are Skit, Bug, and Continent. The buildings of the Kuril secondary school for 250 students have already been built on the island, as well as a modern central district hospital with 50 beds with a polyclinic for 100 visits per shift. New hospital
sports complex

landscaping work

In February 2012, two 8-apartment buildings were commissioned
New airport Iturup is located on the sunny side of the island, which will allow you to easily get to the island even in bad weather. The extended 2.2 km long runway will accommodate all types of aircraft operating in the region. There is a geothermal spring with radon waters near Kurilsk.
A few years ago, the springs consisted of two concrete vats for salting fish, in which vacationers took baths, not forgetting to dot the neighborhood with broken bottle glass. Improved geothermal springs by Gidrostoroy company
Shikotan island- the largest island of the Lesser Ridge of the Kuril Islands. Malokurilskoye is the administrative center of the island. The population is about 2100 people. A deep-water pier has already been built and operated at the funds of the federal program in the Malokurilskaya Bay on Shikotan, and in the neighboring Krabozavodskaya Bay on the same Shikotan, the construction of a berth is nearing completion on the terms of co-financing - the own funds of CJSC Gidrostroy and the regional budget.



Fish processing complex "Krabozavodsk" is equipped with the most modern equipment .
the capacity of the workshop allows to receive and process up to 300 tons of raw fish daily.
New kindergarten for 70 places (2010)

Image copyright AFP

Image caption In 2010, the then President of Russia Dmitry Medvedev visited the Kuriles

Frants Klintsevich, Deputy Chairman of the Defense and Security Committee of the Federation Council, announced the construction of a naval base in the Kuriles. This is not the first mention of a military facility on the islands, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu spoke about this earlier, but for the first time they started talking about this project in the present tense.

"The decision has been made. It is under implementation," Klintsevich said, without specifying exactly where the military facility would be located.

Perhaps he had in mind the island of Matua - a small piece of land in the center of the Kuril chain. In 2016, Defense Minister Shoigu said that Russia intended not only to restore, but also to actively exploit this island.

By that time, a large expedition of the Russian Geographical Society and the Pacific Fleet (Pacific Fleet) had already visited the island. The second expedition began in the summer of 2017 and continues to this day.

• Russian senator: the decision on the naval base in the Kuril Islands has been made
• Will Putin agree to the return of the Kuril Islands to Japan?
• Japan regrets the deployment of Russian missiles in the Kuriles

"Specialists conducted more than 1,000 laboratory studies on physical, chemical and biological indicators, made more than 200 measurements of the relief and the external environment. Radiation and chemical reconnaissance was also carried out, the fortifications of the island and more than 100 historical objects were examined. Divers carried out work on a hydrographic study of bays and bays of the island of Matua," the RGS website says.

Image copyright Google

Image caption Perhaps the naval base will be located on the island of Matua

The reports of the expeditions talk a lot about the study of marine invertebrates and algae, the study of the activity of the Sarychev Peak volcano, but if the Ministry of Defense is really going to build a base on this island, then hydrographic studies of the seabed topography and the study of the remains of Japanese military installations are most likely especially important for it. .

The new base will be able to receive any ships, including the first rank, Klintsevich said on Thursday, without specifying which ships will be based at this facility.

The ships of the first rank include aircraft carriers, destroyers, missile and anti-submarine cruisers, and nuclear submarines. For such deep draft boats, it is really necessary to carefully prepare the seabed.

The ownership of some of the Kuril Islands by Russia is disputed by Japan. They went to the Soviet Union at the very end of World War II, when Soviet amphibious assaults landed on the islands. The ownership of some of the islands was not secured by international treaties.

Japan claims the Iturup, Kunashir, Shikotan islands of the Kuril ridge and a group of small Habomai islands, referring to the Shimonoseki Treaty of 1855. The island of Matua, which Shoigu spoke about, does not belong to the disputable group - it is located in another part of the ridge, in its central region.

Russia insists that the islands belong to it, referring to the inadmissibility of revising the results of World War II.

Island as base

The Kuril Islands are located in a strategically important area: they separate the Sea of ​​Okhotsk from the Pacific Ocean, as if blocking access to it from the southern coast of the Russian Far East.

During the Second World War, a powerful system of fortifications, airfields, and naval bases was built on the islands. One of the objects was located just on Matua - there are still coastal concrete fortifications on the island, the remains of an airfield, warehouses, shelters.

Image copyright Google

Image caption There are traces of Japanese field fortifications on Matua.

In Soviet times and until 2001, there was a frontier post on the island, but in recent years the island has remained uninhabited.

At present, the 18th Machine-Gun Artillery Division (the only such unit in the Russian army) is deployed on the Kuril Islands with reinforcement units on Iturup and Kunashir. Recently, coastal missile systems "Bal" and "Bastion", as well as anti-aircraft systems "Buk" were placed on the islands. The Bastion complex was located on the island of Iturup, and the Bal complex was located on Kunashir.

Matua is not the most comfortable place to live and even to build a military base. Strong winds blow on the island, there are no large convenient bays on the coast. Finally, the entire northern part of the small island is a volcano that last erupted quite recently - in 2009.

The island is located at a great distance from supply bases, and communication with it, especially during the winter months, is difficult due to the fact that the Sea of ​​Okhotsk freezes in this place.

Image copyright NASA

Image caption Eruption of the Sarychev Peak volcano on the island of Matua in 2009

In any case, building a large base on it will be extremely costly.

However, Russia seems ready to spend. On the one hand, the Kremlin has long sought to expand its military presence in the oceans. And the Pacific region, which has attracted more and more attention in recent years, is extremely important for Russia.

For example, one of the two landing helicopter carriers that Russia intended to purchase from France was to be based in the Pacific Fleet.

"When I served in the Far East, the issue of deploying a ship formation of the Pacific Fleet in the Kuril Islands was considered. It is advantageous to create a base on the islands for the sole reason - direct access to the ocean. Of the places that were identified as suitable for it by geometry, the difficulties were as follows. First - difficult ice conditions in winter. The second is high and low tides of about six meters. The third is strong winds," Admiral Vladimir Valuev, former commander of the Baltic Fleet, said in an interview with RIA Novosti.

In the days of the USSR, which had a larger Pacific Fleet than Russia now, a large military base was never built on the Kuril Islands.

Russia's second goal is to gain a foothold on the Kuril Islands themselves. The unresolved issue with the Kuril Islands hinders the development of relations between the two countries, each time Moscow and Tokyo raise it and obviously greatly unnerves both sides.

What base can Russia afford?

Speaking about the scale of the future facility, Senator Franz Klintsevich said that the new base will be able to receive any ships, including the first rank.

At the same time, Klintsevich used the word "base", that is, he meant a rather large object, which should include not only berths, but also infrastructure for the maintenance of ships, ideally a dock and a shipyard, barracks for crew accommodation and base personnel, air defense units and the airfield.

And all this - on an island with an area of ​​​​52 square kilometers, a significant part of which is occupied by a volcano.

Vasily Kashin, a senior researcher at the Center for Comprehensive European and International Studies at the Higher School of Economics, told the BBC that as a result, only a small ship logistics center could appear on Matua, in Syria, and Russia would invest money in the already existing bases of the Pacific fleet.

There are five of them in the Far East - in Vladivostok, Fokino, Vilyuchinsk (nuclear submarines are based there), Sovetskaya Gavan and Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky.

“Maybe it will be a harbor where there will be several piers, again we don’t know how many; there will be an icebreaker and a couple of tugboats, and some small forces will be constantly deployed,” he said.

At the same time, Kashin noted that even if, for example, a large anti-submarine ship (of the first rank) can approach the island, it remains to be seen how many such ships can be serviced there at the same time and how much service they can receive there.

it becomes more and more difficult to count with each construction site ... As previously reported, Spetsstroy was going to rebuild a number of military facilities in the Sakhalin Region, among them completely autonomous military camps with residential buildings and hostels, barracks, relevant infrastructure, cultural, leisure and sports facilities. How these intentions are being implemented in practice can be found in the November publications related to the Ministry of Defense. In particular, they say that the authorities federal agency special construction of Russia and the director of Spetsstroy A. Volosov, after an inspection trip to the South Kuriles in the middle of the year, assured that the problems with construction were resolved, the deadlines and order of delivery of social and military facilities were determined, and thus, everything that was scheduled for the rearmament of the group of Russian troops on South Kuriles will be done! Huge plans, judge for yourself:

Bay of Kitovaya.

On Iturup in the military camp of the village of Kitovoe, a contract from 2012 provides for the construction of dormitories for officers and soldiers, a division headquarters, a checkpoint, a first-aid post, storage facilities and warehouses for fuel and lubricants, a food plant, training grounds and playgrounds, a large educational building, a sports and fitness complex, etc. . according to the tender for the complex arrangement of the military camp. All this must be completed and put into operation by the contractor no later than November 15, 2015. More than 3 billion rubles were transferred in advance for the construction under the terms of the contract. However, not a penny reached the subcontractors. There is no design and estimate documentation for which the general contractor is responsible, there are no technical specifications and working documentation for the facilities, and there are no working resources: out of the required number of 700 builders, about a third are at the facilities. The general contractors of FSUE “Spetsstroyengineering”, GUIR No. 2 (organizations subordinated to Spetsstroy) arrived at the construction site only in July of this year, as if they had guessed for the inspection.

in / h in the item Hot Beach. Kunashir

The delay in the implementation of planned work is enormous; almost a year, it is impossible to catch up with such a lag in local conditions, in addition, failure to meet deadlines is fraught with the recovery of a large penalty. Well, the military will not receive many long-awaited residential infrastructure facilities - hostels and barracks. It turns out that soldiers and officers will have to serve in tents, as is now happening in Primorye through the fault of Spetsstroy? At the facilities of the economic zone, the training and material base, the warehouse of rocket and artillery weapons, the territory of the base of the group of support vessels and the facilities of engineering and technical support, construction work did not begin at all. Or maybe, in Kunashir, the contractors of Spetsstroy "Spetsstroyengineering" and GUIR No. 2 meet the deadlines?

military unit in the village of Lagunnoye, Kunashir.

Here, under a similar contract from 2012, the same military-based infrastructure must be handed over by 2015. Advance funding for this project has also been received in full, but by November only a temporary administrative campus has been set up for 20 people and some building materials have been brought. Construction on Kunashir requires about 600 specialists, but only 30 people work. A strange situation has developed ... The military department, for some reason, endures the turmoil and misunderstandings taking place in Spetsstroy. And the endless commissions, meetings, agreements between the military and the leadership of the builders are simply meaningless. For the reason that, according to the military, they constantly come to all these events different people, often unrelated to the performance of the contract. Since 2012, four subcontractors have been replaced at the Kuril construction sites, while the military department has not received any reports on the disbursed funds from any of them ... security on our eastern borders.

The Japanese Foreign Ministry has already responded to this information, saying that Tokyo is "closely monitoring the movement of Russian troops" and is studying the issue of building a Russian Navy base in the Kuril Islands. So why would Russia need a base in the Kuril Islands, the appearance of which will certainly provoke discontent on the Japanese side, and where will it be located?

Let's start with the fact that from a military point of view, the Kuriles should be considered a strategic territory, if only because we still do not have a peace treaty on these borders with our closest neighbor Japan, and the islands of Kunashir, Shikotan, Iturup and the Habomai archipelago Tokyo still considers its "northern territories". At the same time, the United States has its military installations on the territory of Japan itself.

In particular, huge strategic importance for USA has japanese island Okinawa. In fact, this is an outpost of the Pentagon in the Pacific Ocean. It deployed a whole network of military bases, training grounds and airfields. There is a US military air base Kadena, which plays an important role for the American presence in Southeast Asia. In addition, there are approximately 16,000 US Marines serving at Camp Hansen, Camp Schwab, and Camp Zookeran. In total, about 30,000 US troops are stationed in Okinawa - about half of the entire US military contingent in Japan.

Even if it is theoretically assumed that a potential enemy captures the Russian Kuriles, this immediately opens up for him a direct path to the entire territory of Russia from the Pacific Ocean. That is why in Soviet times the Kuriles were reliably protected by large groupings of troops. In particular, a powerful division of the Marine Corps was stationed there. But then, with the collapse of the Union, the number of troops in the Kuriles began to rapidly decrease. It was expensive to supply troops from the center, the authorities rarely got there for inspections, and numerous reformers preferred to “cut” and “optimize” rather than prove the need to strengthen the Far Eastern group. So, in fact, the current decision to create a naval base here is just a restoration of the "status quo" - the previously existing situation.

It is known that today the 18th machine gun and artillery division, numbering up to three and a half thousand people, is based in the Kuriles. It is well equipped with self-propelled artillery, air defense systems, rocket artillery and tanks. An attack from the sea on the island of Kunashir is capable of repelling the Bal complexes, and on the Iturup island - the Bastion complexes.

In addition to missile systems, coastal units are reinforced with Leer-3 universal highly automated systems, which include control stations and Orlan-10 drones, which can use various types of troops - from motorized riflemen and tankers to electronic warfare units.

However, according to the military, for the antiamphibious defense of the islands, as well as for a more tangible military presence of Russia in the area, especially given that the Japanese still claim them, it is still necessary to strengthen the naval grouping.

Now parts of the Pacific Fleet there are actually divided into two components - one is based in Vilyuchinsk, the other - in Vladivostok. "An intermediate base is absolutely necessary," said Alexander Khramchikhin, deputy director of the Institute for Political and Military Analysis.

About which of the Kuril Islands will become the site for the deployment of a new military facility Russian fleet, It's not clear yet. But the military department has been thinking about this task for a long time. Our sailors have repeatedly carried out many months of expeditionary trips to the islands of the Great Kuril ridge with the aim (Sergey Shoigu himself told about this) to study the possibility of a promising basing of the forces of the Pacific Fleet.

In particular, a joint expedition of the Ministry of Defense and the Russian Geographical Society (by the way, like the military department is also headed by Sergei Shoigu) visited the island of Matua, which the Japanese used during World War II as a naval and air base.

Matua is an island in the middle of the Kuril chain, formed by volcanic activity. By the way, Japan does not claim it, which is important if we consider the island as a potential site for the base of the Russian Navy. From this point of view, Matua is very well located. There are still three from the Japanese runways. And the participants of the joint expedition were very surprised when they found that, taking into account the wind rose, even the most modern aircraft can still land on these runways in almost any weather conditions.

According to a number of military experts, it is this island that is most likely to be considered as the location of the new Russian naval base.