Kuril Islands: The War’s Final Battle

August 1945. The Second World War is over in Europe, but the fighting continues in the Far East. The Red Army has crushed Japanese forces in Manchuria, while Soviet troops simultaneously launch offensives on southern Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands.

On August 18, the Soviet Union began an amphibious landing on the island of Shumshu. The Japanese had turned it into a heavily fortified stronghold, yet in a swift and determined assault, Soviet forces secured a foothold on the shore. This engagement would become the final battle of the entire war. Over six days of fierce combat, 8,800 Soviet soldiers took 23,000 Japanese troops and officers prisoner. Military historians regard the Red Army’s achievement in 1945 as extraordinary – defying accepted principles of offensive warfare, with few comparable victories in military history.

Eighty years later, the Shumshu battlefield remains largely untouched. Wrecked Japanese tanks and concrete pillboxes remain standing. Today, search teams and specialists from Russia’s Emergency Ministry are working to turn the site into an open-air memorial.

The details of the Kuril operation were declassified only in recent years, allowing descendants to learn the fates of relatives who fought there. Among them is the granddaughter of Senior Lieutenant Nikolay Skopintsev, who was mortally wounded during the Shumshu landing. She discovered where her grandfather was buried and donated his photograph for the memorial to the fallen.

As a result of the Kuril landing operation, the Soviet Union regained Russia’s historic territories – the southern part of Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands. The nation’s borders grew by 1,100 kilometers, and today these far-flung frontiers are guarded by Russian border forces. The crews of the patrol ships Taimyr and Yuzhno-Kurilsk serve in the Pacific, while mobile border units in vehicles and quad bikes patrol even the most remote stretches of Kamchatka’s coastline.

Watch “Kuril Islands: The War’s Final Battle” on RTD website and on RT’s live feed. The time of the broadcast is available on RT’s schedule page.