Finland completely blocked its border with Russia

According to the Fars News Agency, Finland, which joined NATO last April, closed the last open border crossing with Russia on Wednesday and completely blocked this border.

According to the “Associated Press” news agency, the government of “Petri Orpo”, the Prime Minister of Finland, claimed that Moscow is using the issue of immigrants in the form of a “combined war” to destroy the stability of this Scandinavian country and decided to close the entire The common border of 1340 kilometers between the two countries was temporarily closed.

Raja Jospi border crossing in the arctic region of Finland’s Lapland, which is 250 kilometers away from the city of Murmansk in northern Russia, according to The crossing was scheduled to be closed at 2 pm local time on Wednesday.

The deputy commander of the Finnish Border Guard Regiment in Lapland announced the situation during the four hours that the crossing was open on Wednesday. It was calm and no migrants tried to enter Finland.

Finnish authorities say that around 1,000 migrants without visas or valid documents have arrived at the border since August, among them more than 900 people arrived there in November.

A significant part of the northeastern border of the NATO alliance now belongs to Finland, which is also known as the northern border of the European Union.

Finnish authorities say that the majority of illegal immigrants who entered the country were from Afghanistan, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria and Yemen, and the majority of them applied for immigration upon arrival in Finland. have taken refuge.

The official closure of the entire eastern border of Finland with Russia is scheduled to take effect at midnight on Wednesday when the “Raja Jospi” crossing is closed after the Finnish government closed seven other crossings this month. For a while, Bast was considered as the only open border crossing between the two countries.

Although Moscow and Helsinki had friendly relations for several decades, tensions between the two countries intensified after the war in Ukraine.

Relations between the two countries were severed following Finland’s May 2022 decision to join NATO under the pretext of Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine.

Finland became the 31st member of the NATO alliance in April of this year.

Kremlin has denied the accusation that it encourages immigrants to enter Finland, and has criticized Finland’s decision to He lamented the closure of border crossings with Russia. Maria Zakharova, spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, said that Finland officially informed Moscow on Wednesday that it has closed the last open border crossing located in the northernmost part of the border with Russia.

Zakharova He said, Finland has harmed its own citizens by closing this border crossing.

Dmitry Peskov, the spokesman of the Kremlin, spoke to reporters on Wednesday in response to a question about the program of NATO member states. “No one and nothing threatens Finland, and this is an extreme measure,” he said for deploying their troops on the Finnish-Russian border.

“The deployment of more troops on our border may increase.” There have been. The Finns should be clearly aware that the strengthening of the military presence on the border is a threat to us.” It will take until December 13, and then a border crossing may reopen.

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