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By Anne Kauranen
HELSINKI (Reuters) – Finland is likely to take further steps to halt an unusually giant surge in the number of asylum seekers crossing the Russian border, which the country and its allies see as a move orchestrated through Moscow, the prime minister said on Monday. .
About 900 asylum seekers from countries including Afghanistan, Kenya, Morocco, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria and Yemen entered Finland from Russia in November, up from less than one a day earlier, according to Finnish border guards.
Finland attributes the development to an update to the Russian border protocol and calls it a hybrid attack.
He claims Moscow is directing them to the border in retaliation for their resolve to strengthen defense cooperation with the United States, something the Kremlin denies. Finland angered Russia when it joined NATO in April, ending decades of military non-alignment due to the war in Ukraine.
He has already closed all access points and is still waiting for more migrants to arrive.
“Intelligence from other sources tells us that there are still other people on the move. . . If this continues, more measures will be announced in the near future,” Prime Minister Petteri Orpo said at a news conference.
He gave no main points about what the measures entail.
Several Finnish media reported on Monday, citing anonymous government sources, that the government had held talks on the final definition of the entire border.
The Finnish Defense Forces announced last week that border guards would set up transience barriers on parts of the border to prevent other people from crossing the forests.
Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said at the press conference with Orpo that the defense of the Finnish border is a joint task and that Sweden would help if Finland requested it.
He said Russia orchestrated the scenario “with the apparent aim of provoking wider disorders and creating fragmentation in Western countries. “
“This is an external border of the EU and we have no unusual interest in (Finland’s) efforts,” he said.
The European Union’s border agency, Frontex, agreed last week with Finland to deploy dozens of its border guards along with another body of workers and gadgets to help at the border starting this week.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told a news conference in Brussels on Monday that the defense alliance had not obtained any requests to participate.
“In recent weeks, Moscow has facilitated the arrival of migrants at Finland’s border with Russia, closing border crossings, viewing migration as a tool to exert pressure on a neighbor and a NATO ally,” Stoltenberg said.
In 2021, a surge in migration from the Middle East and Africa via Belarus created a humanitarian crisis that Poland and the European Union say was intentionally created through Minsk in an effort to destabilize the bloc. Belarus has continuously denied the airlift of others across the border.
(This story has been reclassified to correct a typo in paragraph 1)
(Reporting via Anne Kauranen and Essi Lehto in Helsinki and Anna Ringstrom in Stockholm; additional reporting via Andrew Gray in Brussels; editing via Louise Rasmussen, Terje Solsvik and Alison Williams)