Finland, one of the few North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) countries that shares a border with Russia, has announced a proposal to spend 139 million euros (R$ 774.12 million) on building a barrier on the eastern border. with Russia in 2023, the Finnish Border Guard said on Friday (18).
“In the assessment of the Finnish Border Guard, the change in the security environment made it necessary to build a barrier along part of the eastern border,” it said in a statement.
“If Russia reduces its border control, this could cause additional pressure on the Finnish side to control illegal entry. Finland cannot rely on the effectiveness of Russian border control,” the statement said.
The planned border fence is expected to span a distance of 130 to 260 kilometers – just part of the 1,335-kilometer border the country shares with Russia – and will come with surveillance equipment and a patrol road as well.
Construction of this fence is expected to take three to four years and it should hold for about 50 years, according to the Finnish Border Guard.
A pilot section of the fence will be built in Imatra starting in spring 2023.
Helsinki, the capital of Finland, has increasingly restricted crossings on the eastern border it shares with Russia.
The Finnish border was one of the few entry points for Russians after many Western countries closed their airspace and borders to Russian planes in response to the invasion of Ukraine.
Finland closed its border with Russia at the end of September, at a time when land traffic between the two countries intensified, as the Russians tried to escape the “partial mobilization” of hundreds of thousands of citizens to fight in the war waged by Vladimir Putin.
“The government considers that Russian mobilization and the increasing volume of tourists arriving in Finland and transiting through the country jeopardize Finland’s international position and international relations,” the Finnish Ministry of Foreign Affairs wrote in a statement at the time.
He said that while the “resolution aims to completely stop tourism and related transit from Russia”, it “will not prevent travel where it is deemed necessary for humanitarian reasons, for national interests or to fulfill Finland’s international obligations”.
According to a November statement from the Finnish Border Guard, “the amount of entries has significantly decreased after the restrictions came into effect”.
On September 29, around 8,583 Russian nationals crossed the eastern border into Finland from Russia. That number dropped to 1,700 when restrictions began on Sept. 30, according to Border Guard statistics.
On Friday, the Guard’s head of international affairs, Matti Pitkaniitty, said on Twitter that the proposed barrier “is much more than just a fence. It is an entirely new border infrastructure and a new approach to border surveillance.”
Source: CNN Brasil
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