A woman and her dogs returns from the local store while a child stands holding a sleigh in Gornoe.
The military town of Gornoe on Iturup island, one of the most southerly of Russia's Kuril Islands, was built in the early 1980s and used to house the families of personnel belonging to artillery, helicopter and fighter pilot divisions of the Russian Armed Forces stationed nearby. In the 1990s, these regiments were disbanded and after an earthquake in 1994, many of Gornoe's buildings were abandoned and looted. Much of the town's infrastructure fell into disrepair. Nearby Kasatka Bay (which was called Hiokappu Bay while still under Japanese control) is still considered by the Russian military as "the most suitable landing point for a potential adversary" in this part of the country. It was the departure point for two dozen ships and six aircraft carriers that made their way to Pearl Harbour on 26 November 1941 to attack the US navy there and bring the US into the Second World War. The Kuril islands were transferred from Japan to Russia in 1945 after Japan's defeat. On 1 December 2015 the official count of Gornoe's residents was 635, 128 of whom were children. In 2015 Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu announced that a new base was to be built on Iturup island.