As you probably know, Finland joined NATO back in April becoming the 31st member of the group. This irritated Vladimir Putin whose supposed goal for invading Ukraine was keeping NATO away from his border. Now he has a NATO member sharing an 800 mile border with his country.
This week Finland announced it was closing its border crossings with Russia (all but one) in an attempt to reduced the number of asylum-seekers who are showing up. Finland claimed the asylum-seekers, who are mostly from the Middle East and North Africa, are being directed to the border by Russia as a way to create problems for the country and even to destabilize it.
More than 700 migrants from nations such as Yemen, Afghanistan, Kenya, Morocco, Pakistan, Somalia and Syria, have in the past couple of weeks entered Finland via Russia. Helsinki says Russia is funneling migrants to the border, a charge the Kremlin has denied.
Having last week closed four border stations, Finland overnight closed all remaining passenger crossings except its northernmost one, Raja-Jooseppi located high north in the Arctic region, for a month.
Russia responded by promising to transport asylum-seekers to the one remaining border crossing.
Russian authorities will transport 55 asylum seekers who were waiting to cross the now-closed Salla border crossing with Finland to the last open crossing in the north of the Murmansk region, its governor announced Friday.
This is basically what Finland claims Russia has been doing all along. Finland posted an official statement on Wednesday suggesting the migrants being sent to Finland were connected to international crime.
Illegal immigration at Finland’s eastern border has continued to grow and has also expanded to other border crossings. Based on the observations made by the Border Guard and other authorities and the information received, it is clear that the authorities of a foreign country and other actors play a role in facilitating the arrival of persons who have crossed the border to Finland. The phenomenon is also related to international crime. The phenomenon and the threat of its further expansion pose a serious threat to national security and public order in Finland and elsewhere in the Schengen area. The measures in accordance with the current decision have not stopped the phenomenon in the intended way.
There’s a video posted on X which shows what is happening. The asylum-seekers mostly arrive on bikes. But the bikes are provided by Russian authorities.
The video stops roughly at 64.547355, 30.960533. About 50 km from the Finnish border. The people are moving towards Finland.
The operation is orchestrated by Russian authorities. These people couldn’t move in the border control zone if the Russians wouldn’t let them. 2/ pic.twitter.com/Z6czK5OM3V
— Emil Kastehelmi (@emilkastehelmi) November 19, 2023
There are no Russians trying to cross the border. They’re sending people without necessary travel documents from countries like Yemen, Somalia and Syria.
Russia is taking advantage of poor people in the middle of winter, in freezing temperatures. 4/ pic.twitter.com/WMWE08VP8L
— Emil Kastehelmi (@emilkastehelmi) November 19, 2023
Russia’s goal is to cause instability at the border and in wider society. In addition, there may be persons with questionable backgrounds among the migrants.
Finland is ready to close the whole eastern border if needed. 6/6
— Emil Kastehelmi (@emilkastehelmi) November 19, 2023
EU border guards are also coming to Finland’s border to help keep order.
The European Union’s border protection agency, Frontex, is set to deploy 50 officers to Finland after an increase in asylum seeker arrivals at its eastern border with Russia.
Frontex said on Thursday that in addition to border guard officers and other staff, the agency would send equipment such as patrol cars “to bolster Finland’s border control activities”.
It’s interesting to see Finland responding to 700 migrants arriving in one month as “hybrid warfare” by Russia. Finland’s foreign minister has already said her country will close the border completely if necessary to prevent threats from entering. The concern is that soldiers concealing their identity could be pushed across the border along with actual asylum-seekers.
Finland is prepared to close all its border crossings with Russia if necessary and has warned that Moscow could try to smuggle soldiers or war criminals into the EU among the migrants it is deliberately sending across the frontier.
Elina Valtonen, Finland’s foreign minister, told the Financial Times that if Russia intensified its operation of allowing migrants from countries such as Yemen, Iraq and Syria to cross without documents, her country could restrict the filing of asylum applications to Helsinki airport — and so exclude its checkpoints along the land border.
Finland says Russia is using the migrants to put a kind of pressure on Helsinki that falls short of outright hostilities, a method sometimes known as “hybrid” warfare or operations…
“It’s more of a philosophical question — we cannot have Russia decide which people come to the border, and which people come over,” she said, adding that the lack of documents complicated the process of checking people’s identities.
Right on cue, Russian propagandists are making threats.
Tigran Keosayan, the husband of everyone’s favorite Kremlin propagandist and the editor-in-chief of RT Margarita Simonyan, made some ridiculous threats against Finland after Finns closed four of their border crossings with Russia.
1/2 pic.twitter.com/p4uqZANYAH
— Pekka Kallioniemi (@P_Kallioniemi) November 21, 2023
Here’s a DW report on the situation. This confirms that these migrants are being brought across Russia (partly by plane) just to be sent to the border with Finland.
Read the full article here