Finnish News Recap, week 46: Trouble at the Border edition

TROUBLE AT THE BORDER: Pretty much the entire last week (as well as this week) have been dominated by trouble at the Finnish borders, namely an influx of new asylum applicants arriving through Russia. This has been widely regarded as a hybrid warfare op facilitated by Russian authorities, though there are differences in view as to what Russia would specifically be trying to achieve. Some think, for instance, that Russia is trying to punish Finland for a new defence agreement with the US. One possibility would be a counterreaction to something like this, for example.

The seekers arrive, or at least claim to arrive, from a variety of traditional asylum-seeker countries, like Syria, Afghanistan and so on. If such asylum applicants manage to pass the border, they can still apply for asylum in the normal order. Finland can, of course, handle some hundreds of asylum seekers, as has arrived now, but if the numbers start reaching tens of thousands – and that’s the fear of what happens if something is not done – then it’s a whole other question.

Such troubles at European borders are nothing new. Everyone remembers what happened in 2015 in the Mediterranean and Balkans, but even before the war in Ukraine, there was the Belarus-Poland border crisis of 2021, also widely suspected to involve a plot by Lukashenko and Putin to cause chaos within the EU. That crisis actually still continues, though not at the same acute level as in 2021.

The Finnish government, which has to balance national security issues with the international treaties that at least technically demand a real possibility of seeking asulum, has responded to the situation by first closing all southeastern border entry points and later by closing all others too - expect one. The one border closure, Raja-Jooseppi, is already pushing temps under -10, so this is a clear attempt to simultaneously in the rather inaccessible far North of Finland. Clearly the wish is to not get anyone there – while offering the technical possibility of entry for the ones that do.

This is actually the method of operations indicated by the new borders law passed the previous center-left government, which probably explains why the previous government’s main party, Social Democrats, have given their unequivocal support for the actions and even the more pro-immigrant Left and Greens are at least quite careful in their criticisms. It still remains unclear how effective all of this actually is, though the entries seem to have abated at least somewhat.

An attempt to just be done with it and close the entire border and/or limit asylum seeking to Helsinki-Vantaa airport (ie. Finland’s main airport) was shot down by the Deputy Chancellor of Justice (ie. the top civil servant in charge of monitoring whether the government’s actions follow the law) Mikko Puumalainen. Puumalainen has already been notorious among Finns Party members for various lawsuits aimed at them during the previous parts of his career, so this wasn’t taken lightly – but when such a civil servant says that what the government does is illegal, there’s little the government can do beyond changing their own course of action.

Russian authorities have, of course, protested the border closure and indicated unspecific “countermeasures”, though that’s pretty much to be expected. A number of Russian immigrants in Finland have protested the borders closure, arousing predictable reactions about them being on the wrong side of the border if they wish to protest such a thing.

Meanwhile, pro-Ukrainian groups brought a destroyed Russian tank to the Helsinki centre for show. This appears to have, strangely enough, aroused as much ire among Russians – both those living here and the Russian authorities – as the borders closure. Some Russians have brought flowers to place at the tank, pro-Ukrainians then take the flowers away.

IN OTHER NEWS, Christian Democratic MP, who had been on trial for speech charges, again had those charges thrown out, this time by the Court of Appeals, and Finnish-Canadian fashion entrepreneur Peter Nygård was convicted of sex abuse charges. The field of candidates with any actual chance in the presidential elections is complete with Social Democrats formally nominating EU Commissioner Jutta Urpilainen.

Image: Raja-Jooseppi border entry point. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Finland-Russia_border#/media/File:Ven%C3%A4j%C3%A4-kyltti.jpg