Finland closes the last border crossing with Russia for two weeks

Finland said on Tuesday it has temporarily closed its only remaining open border crossing with Russia to stem the influx of asylum seekers. The country accuses Moscow of orchestrating retaliation for Finland’s decision to join NATO.

Finnish authorities have been raising the alarm for weeks about an increasing number of migrants entering the country to seek asylum. They describe this as an attempt by the Kremlin to sow discord. They had already closed seven of the eight crossings along Finland’s vast border with Russia, leaving only the Raja-Jooseppi checkpoint in hard-to-reach northern Lapland, above the Arctic Circle, open to travelers.

On Tuesday, Prime Minister Petteri Orpo said Raja-Jooseppi would also close for two weeks at midnight on Wednesday to help the government get to grips with a situation he said threatened Finland’s national security. Asylum applications will be limited to airports and seaports.

“The government’s goal is for the exceptional situation on Finland’s eastern border to be normalized as quickly as possible,” he said at a news conference. “The activity we are witnessing at the Finnish border must end.”

The message to migrants, Interior Minister Mari Rantanen said at the press conference, “is not to come – the border is closed.”

The dispute comes two years after Belarus, Russia’s close ally, granted short-term visas to thousands of people from Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq, arriving on one-way plane tickets and then taking them to the NATO-European Union border with Poland. sent. Union member who strongly opposed migration from those countries.

There was no immediate response from Moscow to Finland’s move, underscoring how sharply relations between the two neighbors have deteriorated since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine last year.

Finland shares a border of 1,300 kilometers with Russia and has a combative history. Its neighboring countries have fought numerous wars over the centuries, and Finland was ruled by Russia for over a century before gaining independence in 1917. The Finns have strong memories of the 1939 ‘Winter War’ and the Second World War, when their country fought against the Soviet Union. Union and lost territory.

After the war, Finland adopted a form of neutrality, bowing to the Soviet threat, and remained outside the Atlantic alliance for more than seventy years. But Russia’s invasion of Ukraine raised fears in Finland, a country of some 5.6 million people, that it could become one of Moscow’s next targets.

Finland and Sweden have cast aside the tradition of non-alignment and moved quickly to join NATO, a move Russia described as “clearly hostile.” Finnish authorities have said they were prepared for “trouble” from Russia in response, pointing to the influx of migrants crossing the border as one manifestation of that.

Finland has accused Russia of encouraging and helping asylum seekers – who border authorities say are largely from the Middle East and Africa – to reach the border even though they did not have the correct documents. About 900 people arrived in November, a sharp increase from previous months The Finnish national broadcaster Yle.

But “it is not just a matter of numbers, but of a phenomenon,” Orpo said at the press conference on Tuesday. “It is a hybrid operation by Russia, and we do not accept that.”

Maria V. Zakharova, a spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, has called the allegations “unfounded” and dismissed them as “misinformation.”

Frontex, the European Union’s border and coast guard agency, said last week it would deploy 50 officers and other staff, along with equipment such as patrol cars, to boost security at Finland’s border crossings. It called the security of Finland’s eastern border “a matter of collective European interest.”

Finland is a member of the European Union and part of a Europe of 26 countries where people can travel freely from country to country without border controls.

On Tuesday, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg accused Russia of “using migration as a tool” in what he called an “attempt to put pressure on neighbors and allies.”

“They will not succeed because we stand together and support each other,” he said at a press conference in Brussels.

Cassandra Vinograd And Lara Jakes reporting contributed.