Finland plans to no longer allow people from Russia to cross the country's border in the future - even if they are asylum seekers. A corresponding draft law is to be presented next week.
Finland closed all eight border crossings with its eastern neighbor in mid-December last year because around 1,300 asylum seekers and undocumented migrants had arrived since the summer. Finnish authorities accuse the Kremlin of encouraging asylum seekers to cross their shared border in order to destabilize the country. It is a “hybrid attack” that Helsinki sees as Moscow’s retaliation for abandoning decades of military non-alignment by joining NATO.