Finland to close entire border with Russia again amid migrant crisis
Finland has announced it is once again shutting all the crossings with Russia due to a massive influx of undocumented migrants.
“The phenomenon has started again", Interior Minister Mari Rantanen told parliament on Thursday, "and we are going to close the entire border".
Helsinki has accused the Kremlin of using migrants in alleged acts of “hybrid warfare" aimed at destabilising Finland.
The Kremlin has denied that Russia is encouraging migrants to enter Finland and said that it regrets the closures.
Finland's U-turn after Tuesday's announcement
The Finnish-Russian border stretches more than 1,340 kilometres, and is the EU's longest land border with Russia.
The new shutdown comes only two days after Helsinki announced the reopening of two crossing points in the south-east, out of eight in total.
In November alone, more than 900 migrants arrived at Finnish border posts without proper visas or valid documentation. Authorities say the vast majority of them were from Syria, Somalia and Yemen.
While Finnish border officials initially said migrants used Russia merely as a transit country on their way from their home countries to the EU, authorities later said that a clear majority of them were living - working or studying - in Russia with legal visas.
