Russia risks Japanese ire with Far East war commemoration

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By Jack Stubbs MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia staged a military parade on Wednesday to commemorate seizing a group of Pacific islands from Japan at the end of World War Two, a move likely to inflame tensions over a long-running territorial dispute with Tokyo. The show of force, the first of its kind on the island of Sakhalin in Russia's Far East, is part of a push by President Vladimir Putin to showcase his country's military might at a time when ties with the West are strained over the Ukraine crisis. State television showed Russian soldiers goose-stepping through streets lined with flowers and war veterans to celebrate what Moscow calls the liberation of Sakhalin and the nearby Kurile islands chain from Japan in 1945.




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