Finland closes all but one border crossing with Russia
Finland is to close three of the last four remaining border crossings with Russia, suspecting Moscow of orchestrating a migration crisis, the Finnish Prime Minister announced on Wednesday.
"The government has today decided to close more border crossings. Only the Raja-Jooseppi crossing will remain open," Petteri Orpo told a press conference.
On Wednesday, border guards and soldiers began erecting barriers including concrete obstacles topped with barbed wire at crossing points on the Nordic country’s long border with Russia to better control the flow of undocumented migrants, officials said.
Some 600 migrants without proper visas and documentation, mostly from the Middle East and Africa, arrived in Finland in November compared to a few dozen in September and October. The arrivals include residents of Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Kenya, Morocco and Somalia, border officials said.
“We need to do this to maintain order (at the crossing points) and guarantee the security of legal border traffic,” Tomi Tirkkonen, deputy commander of the Kainuu border guard district in eastern Finland, told The Associated Press.
The Kremlin has voiced regret about Finland’s decision to close the checkpoints and rejected Finnish authorities’ claims that Russia has encouraged the influx of migrants at the border to punish Finland for joining NATO.
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“Undoubtedly Russia is instrumentalizing migrants” as part of its “hybrid warfare” against Finland, said Finnish Foreign Minister Elina Valtonen on Wednesday. Finland joined NATO in April after decades of military non-alignment and pragmatic friendly relations with Moscow.
“We have proof showing that, unlike before, not only Russian border authorities are letting people without proper documentation to the Finnish border but they are also actively helping them to the border zone,” Valtonen said in comments to The Associated Press on Wednesday.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Wednesday that Russian authorities are ready to work together with Finnish officials to reach an agreement on the border issue. She argued that Finland should have “put forward its concerns to work out a mutually acceptable solution or receive an explanation,” she said.
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The number of migrants attempting to cross into Finland is unusually high and the government of Prime Minister Petteri Orpo has accused Moscow of deliberately ushering migrants to the Russia-Finland border zone that is normally under heavy control by Russia’s Federal Security Service, or FSB.
“There’s been a remarkable change in Russia’s modus operandi” regarding migrants and their movement on the Russia-Finland border, Tirkkonen said, adding that Finland is set to get some assistance from the EU’s border and coast guard agency Frontex to deal with the situation.
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See also:
The migrants are mostly from Yemen, Somalia, Syria, and Iraq. Those are mainly Muslim countries which many people want to leave.
And:
The Russian economy is in bad shape, no matter what the Kremlin says: Russian economist
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