"Close with us." What is happening on the Russian -Finnish border in Kostomuksha

After the authorities of Finland on the night of November 18 closed four out of eight automobile crossings on the border with Russia, the still open Vartius -Lutty checkpoint, refugees began to flock near the Karelian city of Kostomuksha - last weekend dozens of migrants waited for their turn in the cold. Local residents complain about social networks on the frequent theft of bicycles and are perplexed how people without Finnish visas gained access to the border zone. The Mediazon asked these questions to local officials and talked with the Russians who managed to cross the border with Finland these days.

Text: Alla Konstantinova, "Mediazone"

On the night of November 18, Finland Closed four car checkpoints on the border with Russia: three in the Leningrad Region and one in Karelia. The authorities of Finland explained their decision to security considerations: recently, the flow of third countries without visas has sharply increased.

According to the Finnish border service, before Russian border guards did not miss refugees to the crossing points on the border with Finland, if they did not have visas, but recently this ban has been lifted for some reason. Many of the refugees were riding bicycles, so on November 15, Finland forbade crossing the border from Russia on this type of transport.

“People tried to cross the border without the necessary papers, without working bicycle lanterns and helmets. When it was noticed that there were more and more cyclists, it was decided to fight this phenomenon,” said Yle as deputy border guard of the South-Eastern Finland, Lieutenant Colonel Yucca Luccari.

Now, under the threat of closing, the four remaining automobile checkpoints on the border with Russia - Vartius, Kuusamo, Salla and Ryia - Yooseppi. Another - the Vainikkala railway station - was closed for passenger transportation back in March 2022, a month after the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Cemetery of bicycles

The south of the remaining checkpoints of Vartius (from the Russian side - Lutty), it is located about 30 kilometers from the city of Kostomuksha in the north of Karelia. To get to Kostomuksha or by the city’s detour right on the Lutty checkpoint, you need to go through another checkpoint at the entrance to the border zone near the village of Borova. It was there on Saturday, November 18, that dozens of people began to accumulate - in the public "Anti -Bestu Kostomukksha" they wrote about the queue of 52 people.

The inhabitants of Kostomuksha about the influx of refugees from the Middle East and Africa noticeably alarmed, and the head of the city district Sergey Novgorodov reported that the "situation is under control."

In the comments he was asked how, in general, citizens of foreign states were passed without documents to the border zone.

“Why are border guards missing migrants?” The townspeople were indignant . “They won’t miss a simple person, but they are allowed to understand this? Why do a transshipment point in Kostomuksha? It seems to be done purposefully, they will close the border with us!”

In the meantime itself, the theft of bicycles became more frequent in Kostomuksha. “Maybe someone knows where the cemetery of the missing bicycles is? If anything, I am looking for my own,” Victoria Mastich asks the local public VKostakshan. She said "Mediazone" that a bicycle was stolen from the entrance of her house on Sunday, November 19. The townspeople answered her with photographs of several bicycles dumped in a snowdrift. “Go to Avito , there are now a bunch of bicycles for sale at space prices,” they write in the replaces under a different message about the theft.

“Our people began to take them to the checkpoint for a good price, as well as selling bicycles from 30 to 80 thousand rubles,” Kirill Petrochenkov, a resident of Kostomuksha, tells Mediazone.

Kostomukshaka Alina Nirochuk crossed the border through the Vartius checkpoint at about two o’clock in the afternoon on Sunday, November 19. She told Mediazone that Russian border guards organized two parallel queues: one for those who have Finnish visas, and the second for refugees.

“There was a taxi in front of us, whose trunk bicycles stuck out,” she says. “Then three refugee men got out of this car. They got on bicycles and headed towards the testing of passports.”

The audit on the Russian side took about 25 minutes, says Nirochuk. Arriving to the Finnish border, Alina and her fellow travelers saw that they were building fortifications - they pull the “fishing line with spikes” and install an additional fence.

“We had to wait two hours until the Finns began to launch four cars,” she says. “The helicopter also flew on the Finnish border - most likely they were looking for refugees who could climb over the fence. Already at the Finnish point, we quickly checked passports. Finns calmly and without aggression met people. As I heard, the Finns rendered all the necessary assistance to the refugees.”

Migration pressure

In the last days, in Kostomuksha frosts - on Saturday and Sunday, the air temperature there fell to –14 ° C. On the evening of November 19, the city head Sergei Novgorodov reported that migrants under Kostomukkshi were created for the heating point. True, the Ministry of Emergencies of Karelia "Mediazone" reported that after a few hours, around midnight on November 20, he was disbanded as unnecessary, since "all migrants were taken away from there." Where exactly they were taken away, the department was not specified. Later, the head of Karelia, Arthur Parfenchikov, also announced the disbandment of the "heating point".

“To date, it is disbanded, there are no concessions of refugees in the border territories. Migrants who have violated violations after checking passports were detained by employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs,” he wrote.

The head of Kostomuksha Sergey Novgorodov did not answer the Mediazone to the question of how exactly citizens of foreign states fall into the border zone. According to the law, they, like Russian citizens, should receive a pass from the FSB, while waiting for foreigners can be up to 30 days. However, Novgorodov has other data.

“I will answer you in this way,” he paused. “Citizens of foreign states having a visa of the Russian state in the passport have the right to move freely around the country. We have no one expected to transition [borders] to date. Hello? Allo disappeared, everything!”

The Finnish publication Iltalehti reports that on the afternoon of November 20, the Vartius checkpoint has stopped its work due to the fact that nine people were crossed by bicycle.

Today, the Russian Foreign Ministry protested Finland due to the closure of four checkpoints at the border. The department believes that the Finns decided to close the checkpoint "without any consultations with the Russian side." Following Finland, Estonia and Norway also announced his readiness to close their boundaries. The latter is ready, if necessary, “close its border in the shortest possible time,” the Minister of Justice Emily Enger said on November 16.

In turn, the head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Estonia Lauri Laurinemets described Russia's actions on the border with Finland as "migration pressure". In November 2021, at the height of the migration crisis on the borders of Belarus with Poland and Lithuania, the European authorities made the same charges against Alexander Lukashenko.

The Finnish media also reported that "the Russian authorities, obviously, redirected the asylum suppliers to the Finnish border," and the border guards behaved rudely with some migrants. The Russian Foreign Ministry in his statement declared this with a provocation.

"The decision made by Finland under the pretext of the situation with the crossing of the border by migrants to obtain asylum in the territory of this country and the allegedly conscious actions of Russia to organize such flows is unambiguously provocative and obviously in line with attempts to further exacerbate our relations," the website of the department says.

On the evening of November 20, the Finnish Prime Minister Peteri Orppo said that "for some time the Russian authorities missed people without proper documents," therefore, the Government of Finland "High Readiness" and Finnish politicians will soon "take additional measures." Iltalehti, citing sources in the Foreign Ministry and the country's Ministry of Internal Affairs, writes that on the night of November 22, Finland can close the four remaining automobile checkpoints.