The Southern Kuril regional assembly has decided unanimously to ask Japan to provide 3,000 tons of diesel oil to Kunashiri and Shikotan to help alleviate a severe shortage of power-generating fuel, the Interfax news agency reported Friday.
The agency said the authorities on the two islands have not received an adequate supply of heating oil from the central government and their stocks will run out by mid-December.
The Southern Kuril assembly has jurisdiction over Kunashiri, Shikotan and the Habomai islets, three of the four islands off northern Japan that the Soviet Union occupied at the end of World War II.