The Russian Ainu people (Aine; Russian: айны, romanized: Ayny), also called Kurile (курилы, kurily), Kamchatka's Kurile (камчатские курилы, kamchatskiye kurily / камчадальские айны, kamchadalskiye ayny) or Eine (эйны, eyny), can be subdivided into six groups.

[citation needed] As a result of the Treaty of St. Petersburg, the Kurile islands were surrendered to the Japanese, along with the Ainu inhabitants.

A total of 83 North Kurile Ainu arrived in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky on September 18, 1877, after they decided to remain under Russian rule.

[5] However, under Soviet rule both villages were abolished and inhabitants forcibly moved to the ethnic Russian-dominated Zaporozhye settlement in Ust-Bolsheretsky Raion.

[citation needed] On 7 February 1953, K. Omelchenko, the Soviet Minister of the Protection of Military and State Secrets banned the press from publishing any information on the Ainu still living in the USSR.

The Nakamura clan (South Kuril Ainu on the paternal side) are the smallest and number just 6 individuals who live in Petropavlovsk.

[8] Similarly, no one identifies as Amur Valley Ainu, even though people with partial descent are known to exist in Khabarovsk.

[11] In 2004, the small Ainu community living in Kamchatka Krai wrote to Vladimir Putin, urging him to reconsider any move to return the Southern Kurile islands to Japan.

They criticized the Japanese, the Tsarist Russians, and the Soviets for crimes against the Ainu, including killings and forced assimilation.

[7][13] In 2011, the leader of the Ainu community in Kamchatka, Alexei Vladimirovich Nakamura requested that Vladimir Ilyukhin (Governor of Kamchatka) and Boris Nevzorov (Chairman of state Duma) include the Ainu in the central list of Indigenous small-numbered peoples of the North, Siberia and the Far East.

[14] Ethnic Ainu living in Sakhalin Oblast and Khabarovsk Krai are not politically organized.

Of this, 94 lived in Kamchatka Krai, 4 in Primorye, 3 in Sakhalin, 1 in Khabarovsk, 4 in Moscow, 1 in St.Petersburg, 1 in Sverdlovsk, and 1 in Rostov.

The last of the official Ainu households disappeared in the late 1960s, when Yamanaka Kitaro committed suicide after the death of his wife.

The majority of the population in Zaporozhye refers themselves as either Kamchadal (a term used for the natives of Kamchatka to refer to them without acknowledging their ethnic Ainu or Itelmen identity) or Russian, rather than identifying with either of the two native ethnic groups (Ainu and Itelmen).

Although identifying as Itelmen can give additional benefits (hunting and fishing rights), the residents seems to be wary about ethnic polarization and response from full-blooded Russian neighbors.

Families who are the descended from Kuril Ainu include Butin (Бутины), Storozhev (Сторожевы), Ignatiev (Игнатьевы), Merlin (Мерлины), Konev (Коневы), Lukaszewski (Лукашевские), and Novograblenny (Новограбленные) among other unknown ones.

In 1929, the Ainu of Kurile Lake fled to the island of Paramushir after an armed conflict with the Soviet authorities.

His wife, Tamara Timofeevna Pykhteeva was of mixed Sakhalin Ainu and Gilyak ancestry.

After the arrest of Keizo in 1967, Tamara and her son Alexei Nakamura were expelled from Kamchatka Krai and sent to the island of Sakhalin, to live in the city of Tomari.

In 1877, the Badaev (Бадаев) family split from the rest of Northern Kuril Ainu and decided to settle in the Commander Islands, along with the Aleut.

[23] Commander Islands was originally designated as a refuge for the Aleut people (from Atka, Attu, Fox, Andreanof.etc.

But the Ainu were skeptical of the offer and rejected it, as they wanted to stay in Kamchatka mainland, whose geography was familiar to them.

[citation needed] By 1879, the island was home to a total of 168 Aleut and 332 Creole, plus around 50 to 60 people from other nationalities including the Ainu and Russian.