The Government of Finland decided yesterday to close four of the nine border crossings it has on the 1,340 kilometer border it maintains with Russia, the longest of a NATO country with the Eurasian country. The measure will last for three months.
With this decision, announced by the Finnish Prime Minister, Petteri Orpo, Helsinki aims to curb the sudden increase in the arrival of refugees and asylum requests in recent months.
The border crossings of Vaalimaa (Torfiànovka, on the Russian side), Nuijamaa (Brusnichnoie), Imatra (Svetogorsk) and Niirala (Viartsilia) will be closed on the night of Friday 17 to Saturday 18 November. They will remain that way until at least February 18, 2024, said Finland’s interior minister, Mari Rantanen, adding that asylum claims will be concentrated in two centers.
Helsinki attributes the increase in the arrival of immigrants to the Russian authorities, which it has accused of an attempt to destabilize. Finnish President Sauli Niinistö said on Wednesday that he believes Russia is guiding asylum seekers to the Finnish border in retaliation for Helsinki’s rapprochement with the West.
After Russia launched its offensive against Ukraine in February 2022, fears grew in Finland and they began to see Russia as a threat. So it decided to abandon its traditional military neutrality and in April 2023 joined NATO. In addition, it has plans to sign a defense cooperation agreement with the United States.
Russian border service officials usually stop those trying to enter Finland without a valid Schengen visa. “It is clear that the border guards are helping these people and are also escorting or transporting them to the border itself,” said Petteri Orpo on Tuesday.
The Finnish Government already warned at the time that it was considering restricting access to open border points with Russia. “We have prepared for different types of actions, malicious acts on the part of Russia, so the current situation is not a surprise,” added Orpo.
The Kremlin denied its neighbor’s accusations. “We deeply regret that the Finnish authorities have deliberately chosen the path of distancing themselves from the good nature of the relations we had before,” said his spokesman, Dmitri Peskov, to the press.
The Finnish authorities have explained this week that the number of refugees from Russian territory has increased since the end of August, and they fear that it will continue to do so in the near future.
The border guard in the southeast of the Scandinavian country reported that on Wednesday the number of people from Syria, Somalia, Iraq, Yemen and other countries who arrived from Russia and sought asylum in Finland was 74. 55 arrived on Tuesday, and 34 on Monday.
Some 280 asylum seekers have presented themselves at the Russo-Finnish border since the beginning of September. But “the numbers are not the problem”, says the Ministry of the Interior, but “we have indications and information that people are being manipulated to enter Finland”, the department stressed.