Finland announced on Thursday that it would once again close its entire border with Russia, a few hours after reopening two border crossings, accusing Moscow of orchestrating a migration crisis.
“The phenomenon has started again and we are going to close the entire border,” Interior Minister Mari Rantanen declared in front of the Nordic country’s Parliament.
Helsinki accuses Moscow of deliberately letting these migrants pass, denouncing a “hybrid attack” aimed at destabilizing Finland. Accusations rejected by the Kremlin.
Finland decided on Tuesday to reopen part of its border with Russia to “check if there was a change for the better”, warning that it could reverse its decision if “instrumentalized migration” continued, according to the Prime Minister Petteri Orpo.
The two border crossings reopened this Thursday at midnight.
At least 40 people crossed the border to seek asylum on that day alone, Finnish border guards reported.
Nearly a thousand asylum seekers, notably from Somalia, Iraq and Yemen, have presented themselves at the border posts between the two countries since the beginning of August, according to the Finnish authorities.
“This is an organized activity,” the Finnish Prime Minister stressed at the end of November regarding this increase.
Earlier on Thursday, Arthur Parfentchikov, the governor of Karelia, a Russian region bordering Finland, said there were “groups of migrants among the people who want to cross the border.”
“Our law enforcement officers check their documents. People whose passports have been checked and found to be non-compliant are taken to police stations […] The others are allowed to pass through the checkpoint in small groups,” he said.
Relations between the two neighbors, who share a 1,340-kilometer-long border, have deteriorated considerably since February 2022 and the Russian offensive in Ukraine, an attack which led Finland, worried about its security, to join NATO in April 2023.
Moscow then promised to take “countermeasures” after this accession.