Norway ‘will build a fence on its border with Russia’: Scandinavian country wants to follow Finland’s lead after building £300 million security barrier following invasion of Ukraine
Norway is considering plans to install a fence along part or all of the 200-kilometer border the country shares with Russia, inspired by a similar project in Finland.
In an interview with Norwegian public broadcaster NRK published late on Saturday, Justice Minister Emilie Enger Mehl said: ‘A border fence is very interesting, not only because it can act as a deterrent, but also because it contains sensors and technology that allow people to be close to the come to live on the border.’
She said the Norwegian government is currently exploring “various measures” to improve security at the border with Russia in the Arctic, such as fencing, increasing the number of border staff or stepping up surveillance.
The Storskog border station, which has seen only a handful of illegal border crossing attempts in recent years, is the only official border crossing point into Norway from Russia.
Should the security situation in the vulnerable Arctic deteriorate, the Norwegian government is prepared to close the border at short notice, said Enger Mehl, who visited neighboring Finland this summer to learn how the entire 1,330-kilometer Finnish-Russian land border was closed. .
The location of the proposed fence on the border between Norway and Russia
Finland’s £300 million fence along Russia’s border was installed as a security measure after Putin’s invasion of Ukraine
Finland hopes to protect itself against a repeat of events on the EU’s eastern border in Poland in the winter of 2021, when Belarus – a close Russian ally – sparked a crisis by flying in migrants from the Middle East, giving them visas and pushing them across the border. In the photo: construction of another part of the fence earlier this year
The Finnish government was prompted to close all border crossings from Russia to Finland by the end of 2023 after more than 1,300 third-country migrants without proper documentation or visas – an unusually high number – entered the country within three months, just months after the country is a member of NATO.
To prevent Moscow from using migrants in what the Finnish government calls Russia’s “hybrid warfare,” Helsinki is currently building fences with a total length of up to 200 kilometers in separate sections along the border zone that is part of NATO’s northern flank and serves as a border area. The external border of the European Union.
Finnish border officials say fences equipped with top-of-the-line surveillance equipment – to be placed especially around border crossings – are needed to better monitor and control migrants trying to cross from Russia and to give officials time to respond.
The fence in Finland was built close to the Pelkola crossing in Imatra
Norwegian Justice Minister Emilie Enger Mehl said such a fence could also be a good idea for Norway
Inspired by the Finnish project, Enger Mehl said that such a fence could also be a good idea for Norway. According to NRK, her statement was supported by police chief Ellen Katrine Hætta in Norway’s northern province of Finnmark.
“It is a measure that could become relevant on all or part of the border” between Norway and Russia, Enger Mehl said.
The Storskog border station is currently surrounded by a 200-meter-long and 3.5-meter-high fence that was erected in 2016 after about 5,000 migrants and asylum seekers crossed from Russia into Norway a year earlier.
Norway, a country with 5.6 million inhabitants, is a member of NATO but not part of the European Union. However, it belongs to the EU’s Schengen area, whose participants have abolished border controls at their mutual borders, guaranteeing the free movement of citizens.
