By Essi Lehto
HELSINKI (Reuters) – Finland will close all but the northernmost crossing point on its border with Russia from Friday in a bid to halt a flow of asylum seekers to the Nordic nation, Prime Minister Petteri Orpo said on Wednesday.
Since the beginning of the month, more than 600 people without valid travel documents to the European Union have come to Finland via Russia, prompting Helsinki to shut several crossings and accuse Moscow of funneling migrants. The Kremlin denies the charge.
“The government has today decided to close more border stations,” Prime Minister Petteri Orpo told a press conference.
The asylum seekers come from a wide range of nations including Yemen, Afghanistan, Kenya, Morocco, Pakistan, Somalia and Syria, according to immigration authorities.
The Finnish border guard said on Wednesday that organized illegal entry to Finland continued at the Russian border and had moved further north along the 1340-km border to Vartius and Salla, two border stations that still accepted asylum applications.
“There are growing signs that the situation is worsening on the eastern border,” Orpo said.
Finland will close three of the four remaining border crossing points starting at midnight on Friday, leaving only the Raja-Jooseppi open.
“Raja-Jooseppi is the northernmost (border crossing) and it requires a real effort to get there,” Orpo said.
Finland’s President Sauli Niinisto on Monday said returning people who don’t meet the criteria for asylum had become impossible and called for an EU-wide solution to stop uncontrollable entry to Europe’s passport-free Schengen area.
The Kremlin said on Monday it had lodged a formal protest over the partial border closure, saying the decision reflected an anti-Russian stance.
In 2021, Poland, Lithuania and Latvia accused Moscow’s close ally Belarus of artificially creating a migrant crisis on their borders by flying in people from the Middle East and Africa and attempting to push them across the frontier – an accusation Belarus repeatedly denied.
(Reporting by Essi Lehto; writing by Jacob Gronholt-Pedersen; Editing by Alexandra Hudson and Christina Fincher)
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