Which island is Russia’s largest and lies just north of Japan?

Sakhalin is Russia’s largest island and lies just north of Japan.

Sakhalin stretches for roughly 948 kilometres from north to south off Russia’s Pacific coast. The Sea of Okhotsk lies to its west and north, while the Tatar Strait separates it from mainland Siberia. Its southern end is close to Japan’s Hokkaido, across the La Pérouse Strait.

The island has long been inhabited by Indigenous peoples including the Nivkh and Ainu. Russia and Japan contested Sakhalin during the 19th and 20th centuries; after the Russo-Japanese War, Japan controlled the southern half until the Soviet invasion in 1945.

Sakhalin is important for oil and natural gas production, especially around the offshore Sakhalin projects. It should not be confused with Kamchatka, which is a peninsula, or Novaya Zemlya, an Arctic archipelago also belonging to Russia.