Finnish Prime Minister Petteri Orpo said Finland would leave it open only one of the crossings on the border with Russia, which he accused of facilitating the entry of irregular migrants into its territory. On Saturday, Finland had already closed four normally busy border crossings in the south-east of the country to reduce the amount of asylum seekers arriving in Finland from Russia: from midnight on Friday only the Raja-Jooseppi border crossing, in the far north, will remain open.
According to Finland, which shares a 1,340 kilometer border with Russia, the Russian government is encouraging the entry of asylum seekers into Finnish territory as retaliation for Finland’s decision to join NATO, the military alliance that includes a large part of Western countries. Last week Orpo spoke of a “conscious” attitude on the part of Russia and accused the Russian customs authorities of having accompanied several dozen migrants to the border with Finland. For Dmitri Peskov, the spokesman of Russian President Vladimir Putin, by closing the border crossings the Finnish government has decided to “destroy” bilateral relations between the two countries.
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