Japan Yet To Make Feasibility Assessment On Sakhalin-Hokkaido Bridge - Ambassador

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 24th September, 2019) Japan will assess the feasibility of building a bridge between Sakhalin and Hokkaido after Russia figures out how to connect Sakhalin with the mainland portion of the country, Japanese Ambassador to Russia Toyohisa Kozuki told Sputnik on Monday.

Last year, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Yury Trutnev said that Moscow would set out to prove the cost-effectiveness of building a bridge between the Russian island of Sakhalin and Japanese island of Hokkaido.

"We have not heard anything recently about the connection between Sakhalin and the continent, you should ask the Russian government about it. The first condition [for building the Sakhalin-Hokkaido bridge] is a bridge between mainland Russia and Sakhalin.

After that we will be able to speak about this," the ambassador said in response to a question about when Tokyo would assess the expediency of the potential bridge between Russian and Japan.

The idea for building a bridge between the Russian mainland and Sakhalin has been discussed for years. In 2013, the project was examined at the request of the Russian Transport Ministry. At that time, two possibilities involving bridgework and a tunnel crossing were considered, with the total cost estimated to be around 400 billion rubles ($6.44 billion at the current exchange rate).