Have the Russians been fleeing en masse to Finland since Wednesday, the day of the announcement of the partial mobilization decreed by Vladimir Putin to go and fight in Ukraine? This is what tends to show a video that turns a lot on social networks. A line of cars is seen at a standstill in a traffic jam on Finland’s southern border and the message says the jam is 35 kilometers long. Clearly: there would be a massive exodus of Russians. But that’s going a little too fast.
There weren’t 35 kilometers of traffic jams that day. The Finnish border guards themselves say so on their official Twitter account:
Trafiken vid den östra gränsen har ökat under natten. Det finns en liten ökning av antalet gränsövergångar. Jämfört med tiden före pandemin är den dock fortfarande låg. Våra resurser är tillräckliga och läget är under kontroll. #finskagränsen pic.twitter.com/sODYMe7Y3c
— Rajavartiolaitos (@rajavartiolaitos) September 22, 2022
Border guards also claim that the video in question was taken out of context. And it’s true, since it was first published earlier this week on YouTube, two days before Vladimir Putin’s announcement.
The border guards also specify that the situation at the border post has not changed “alarmingly” in recent days, even if the passages have “intensified”. They counted that around 4,800 Russians entered Finland on Wednesday, compared to just over 3,000 a week earlier. The border guards also refer to their webcam, which constantly monitors the traffic. We can see that the number of cars on Wednesday remains limited, except in the evening, when there is a peak of a few hours. Clearly, there is much more traffic, but not huge traffic jams.
Currently, Finland is the only member of the European Union, bordering Russia, which still allows Russian citizens to pass with visas, unlike Poland and the three Baltic countries which have just closed their borders.
However, Finland could follow, since the arrival of Russians on its territory, especially this summer, has annoyed public opinion. Result: the Nordic country has already divided by ten the number of visas granted since September and it could give an additional turn of the screw in the coming days.
In the meantime, when the Russians cross the border and arrive in the first major Finnish city, they are welcomed to the sound of the Ukrainian anthem broadcast every day by loudspeakers from the top of the town hall.
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