Border tensions have heightened between Russian and the NATO alliance’s newest member Finland. Finland has lately accused Moscow of weaponizing migrants to create a crisis at border crossings.
Russia had vowed “countermeasures” after Finland was admitted into NATO last April. Finland’s Border Guard has since documented what it says is a serious uptick in undocumented migrants showing up at crossings, with most of them having originated in Africa and the Middle East.
The some 830+ mile Russian-Finnish border also serves as the external border of the European Union. EU President Ursula von der Leyen has recently joined Finnish Prime Minister Petteri Orpo in condemning what they called Russia’s “instrumentalization of migrants” – with von der Leyen calling it “shameful”.
Finland’s border authorities have said over 300 undocumented asylum seekers have recently arrived, mostly at four southern crossings which at this point have been closed. In some instances this has led to violence, with border guards having deployed riot control measures to keep migrant groups from breaching the border.
“We do not accept such accusations,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said in…
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