The EU Border Agency is sending 50 employees to Finland

The European border protection agency Frontex intends to place 50 of its employees, as well as patrol cars and other equipment, in Finland at the border with Russia – against the background of a sharp aggravation of the situation in connection with the influx of asylum seekers from third countries, organized, according to Helsinki, by with the help of the Russian authorities. The message of Frontex says that the mission will be deployed already next week. It emphasizes that the events on the Finnish-Russian border, which is 1,340 kilometers long, affect the security of the entire European Union.

On Friday night, Finland officially closed for a month three of the four border crossings on the border with Russia, which remained open after the closure of four more crossings closest to St. Petersburg last week. De facto crossings are already closed, as they do not work at night. As reported by Yle, during Thursday, November 23, about 100 people, citizens of Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Yemen, Morocco, Pakistan, Somalia, Sudan and Syria, requested asylum at the “Vartius” and “Salla” crossings.

Only one crossing point of the Russian-Finnish border will remain open – “Raya-Jooseppi” (from the Russian side – “Lotta”). It is located in the north, 240 kilometers from Murmansk. So far, according to the border guards, it is calm there, but the Finnish authorities are preparing for the pressure of migrants.

The governor of the Russian Murmansk region, Andrey Chibys, wrote in a telegram that in the Kandalaksh district there is a “concentration of refugees from other states who want to get to Finland.” According to him, the day before there was a case of “an illegal attempt to break through the border by foreign citizens, it was stopped.” Chibys also wrote that border guards and police officers “check the documents of foreigners in detail.” At the same time, he did not specify whether foreigners who do not have the right to enter Finland will be allowed through the Russian checkpoint. In Helsinki, they claim that previously the Russian authorities did not allow such citizens to the border, but then, without explaining the reasons, they stopped preventing it. The Kremlin denies accusations that Russia is organizing a “hybrid attack” on Finland with the help of migrants.

Earlier it was reported that the Murmansk Region had introduced a state of heightened alertness. “The number of foreign citizens wishing to enter a NATO country through our territory will probably increase many times over,” Chibys wrote.

• Over the past few months, several thousand foreigners who do not have the necessary documents have tried to enter Finland from Russia.
• The Estonian authorities also accused Russia of a “hybrid attack” on Thursday. Over the past week, more than 30 migrants tried to get to Estonia through the Narva border crossing on the border with Russia. However, they were not allowed to enter the country: the Estonian border guards did not allow them to reach the checkpoint, where they could apply for asylum. “Unfortunately, there are many signs that officials guarding the border in Russia, and possibly representatives of other departments, are involved” in the influx of migrants, says the head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Estonia, Laura Laanemets.
• After Russia’s large-scale invasion of the territory of Ukraine, Finland tightened the conditions for entry into the country for Russians. As a rule, holders of Schengen visas are not allowed to enter Finland, a residence permit in the European Union, a permanent residence permit or EU citizenship is required. After the border crossings were closed, bus flights from St. Petersburg to Helsinki, which Russians used, including to get to the airport in the capital of Finland, and vice versa, stopped.