As of: March 9, 2024, 8:08 a.m
By: Christiane Kühl
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Press
Split
Tensions on the Finnish-Russian border continue to rise: According to information from Helsinki, Russia has now smuggled several thousand refugees there.
The border will remain closed until at least April.
As a result of Finland joining NATO in April 2023, the alliance's eastern border has become 1,340 kilometers longer.
Since then, tensions between Finland and Russia have risen rapidly.
Finland is in the process of building a 200-kilometer-long fence along the border, which is partly in remote areas;
the four border crossings have been closed since November.
Russian President Vladimir Putin announced in December that the military would be deployed to the region east of the border.
In January he canceled a 2012 border agreement with Finland.
This shows that Putin is prepared to increase tensions with his neighbor on the border with the EU and NATO.
In its current annual report, the Estonian foreign intelligence service expects that Russia will significantly increase the number of troops along the NATO border in the coming years.
Russia is preparing to create the announced new unit of ground combat troops near the Finnish border, where the Russian military presence has so far been minimal.
For months now, Russia has been deliberately bringing more and more refugees to the border in order to put Finland under pressure.
“We have information that thousands of people are waiting on the Russian side to get to Finland,” Interior Minister Mari Rantanen said at a news conference this week.
She did not say how the Finnish authorities obtained this information.
Rantanen emphasized that she believes that even more migrants will try to cross the border illegally once spring comes and temperatures slowly rise.
There are currently freezing temperatures and deep snow in the forested border areas of Finland.
Finland sees “hybrid threat” from Russia
No more passage to Russia: the closed Vaalimaa border crossing in southern Finland in January.
© Lauri Heino/Lehtikuva/AFP
In response, the Interior Ministry announced changes to the law for improved border protection at the beginning of the week.
These will “help strengthen security at the borders and effectively combat any attempts to put pressure on Finland in the form of instrumentalized migration,” the Interior Ministry said on Monday, without giving details.
The country has increased border controls since the beginning of February and recently concluded an agreement with the USA that allows US armed forces to use 15 military bases for joint operations on land, in the air and at sea.
According to a local TV report, Finland also wants to build hundreds of new shooting ranges where reservists and civilians can practice.
Interest in it has increased enormously since the start of the Ukraine war, it was said.
So far, Finland's conservative government has remained tough and has not opened the border for refugees.
It will remain closed at least until mid-April.
The situation had previously gradually worsened.
According to the Finnish border authority, more than 1,300 refugees from countries such as Yemen, Somalia and Syria entered Finland from Russia between August and December 2023 - instead of the previous average of one asylum seeker per day.
900 of them came in November alone.
Finland's conservative Prime Minister Petteri Orpo viewed this approach as a "hybrid threat" from Moscow and ordered the complete closure of all border crossings on November 28th.
Two crossings that were opened on an experimental basis in December were closed again within one day.
At the time, Rantanen called the crossing of the border of a “double-digit number” of asylum seekers within just under 24 hours a continuation of the Russian hybrid operation: “Finland cannot accept this.” There are no signs that Russia will change its behavior.
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Refugees at the Finnish border: Russian gray zone tactics
A double-digit number of refugees seems small from a Central or Southern European perspective.
But the case shows that Russia is now willing to use so-called “gray zone tactics” against NATO states, somewhere between political pressure and tangible aggression.
“The use of migrants as a weapon is a central element in Russia’s war against Ukraine,” says Armida van Rij of the Chatham House think tank.
“This is intended to undermine the unity of the EU and the determination of Ukraine's allies.” They want to specifically exploit the disagreement in the EU on the migration issue.
The situation at the Finnish border brings back unpleasant memories of the winter of 2021/2022, when thousands of refugees had to camp at the border fence between Belarus and Poland.
The Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko, who is an ally of Putin, had them brought there to put pressure on the EU.
His goal was to get rid of Brussels' sanctions.
There were protests and clashes with border officials at Poland's border.
An unusually large number of refugees also appeared at the borders of Lithuania and Latvia at that time.
But Lukashenko's plan didn't work, especially because Poland rigorously turned people away.
Poland's then Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki called this deliberately caused humanitarian crisis the "biggest attempt to destabilize Europe in 30 years."
A similarly difficult scenario is now looming at the Finnish border.
“It is only right that the EU has stood behind Finland and offered personnel, equipment and financial support to deal with the impact of the recent Russian escalation,” says Armida van Rij.
The EU could also learn from Finland, which is responding to the threat from Russia with a whole-of-society approach.
Sophisticated state education programs there ensured that Finnish citizens understood the danger posed by Russia.