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Border guards patrol the fence near Imatra, near the Finnish-Russian border
Photo: KIMMO BRANDT / EPA
From Friday, Finland will only keep the northernmost border crossing with Russia open. All others would be closed to stop the influx of refugees who had come from Russia to Finland, Finnish Prime Minister Petteri Orpo said.
The EU border protection agency Frontex has also asked the Finnish government for help. It is about personnel and technical equipment, the border guard said. Finnish media reported that the Border Guard had officially asked the Armed Forces for help in building barbed wire barriers at the border stations.
Finnish border guards have already begun to erect additional barriers at border stations with Russia. EU Home Affairs Commissioner Ylva Johansson told the European Parliament that the European Commission was in constant contact with Finland and was ready to help if the situation changed. According to her, Finland has requested 60 Frontex officers.
The Finnish government accuses Russia of increasingly allowing refugees, mostly from the Middle East, to cross the border into Finland without the necessary papers, where they apply for asylum. Moscow denies this. Over the weekend, Finland closed four conveniently located border crossings near St. Petersburg. Since then, the country has only accepted asylum applications at the Vartius and Salla crossings, hundreds of kilometres further north. In recent days, an increasing number of asylum seekers have also come forward there.
"We have to do this to maintain order (at the border crossings) and ensure the security of legal border traffic," Tomi Tirkkonen, deputy commander of the Kainuu border guard district in eastern Finland, told the Associated Press news agency.
The Kremlin has regretted Finland's decision to close the checkpoints. Moscow rejected the Finnish authorities' claim that Russia had encouraged the influx of refugees at the border in order to punish Finland for joining NATO.
Tirkkonen's district monitors and controls two of Finland's nine border crossings on the 1340,<>-kilometer border with Russia. It is at the same time the external border of the European Union and the northeastern flank of NATO.
"There is no doubt that Russia is instrumentalizing migrants" as part of its "water warfare" against Finland, Finnish Foreign Minister Elina Valtonen said. Finland joined NATO in April after decades of military neutrality.
"We have evidence that, unlike in the past, the Russian border authorities are not only allowing undocumented people to enter the Finnish border, but are also actively helping them get to the border zone," Foreign Minister Valtonen told the Associated Press.
In recent weeks, more than 600 people from third countries have entered Finland via Russia and applied for asylum there. In response, Helsinki has closed several border crossings and accused Moscow of smuggling refugees to the Finnish border. Moscow denies this accusation.
Following the recent closures, people from countries in Yemen, Afghanistan, Kenya, Morocco, Pakistan, Somalia and Syria migrated north along the 1340km border to the Vartius and Salla border stations. There they probably wanted to apply for asylum.
Finland will close three of the four remaining border crossing points from midnight on Friday, leaving only Raja-Jooseppi open.
Raja-Jooseppi is the northernmost border crossing in Finland, located about 300 kilometres north of the Arctic Circle.
lpz/AP/dpa/Reuters