Finland will close its last border crossing with Russia if Moscow continues to send undocumented immigrants, Prime Minister Petteri Orpo said on Monday.
“We have closed all but one eastern border crossing, and we are ready to close the last one if necessary,” Orpo said at a news conference.
“Finland protects the external borders of the European Union and NATO. We will not allow this problem to continue,” he added.
About 800 undocumented immigrants, mainly from the Middle East and Africa, have arrived at Finland’s border with Russia since August, exponentially increasing the usual number of arrivals, Helsinki said.
As a result, within two weeks, Finland closed all border posts with Russia except the northernmost one, which borders Russia’s Murmansk region in the Arctic.
The Finnish government understands that Russia wants to destabilize the country and states that this is a “systematic action organized by the Russian authorities”.
Relations between the two neighbors have deteriorated significantly since February 2022, along with the Russian offensive in Ukraine, an attack that prompted Finland, concerned about its own security, to join NATO in April 2023, prompting Moscow to threaten to take of “countermeasures”.
According to Finnish border guards, 60 migrants arrived at the Raja-Jooseppi border post between Saturday and today.
Finland is obliged to allow asylum applications to pass through and closing a border can only happen in exceptional circumstances, according to experts.
Source: DN
