Finland’s eight borders along its 1,340-kilometer border with Russia remain closed, with the two closest open gates in Narva in Estonia and Stróskog in northernmost Norway.
“…there were 4,303 checkpoints in Strskog in January,” Immigration Police Officer Sven Arne Davidsen said in an email to the Barents Observer newspaper.
January is traditionally a peak month for cross-border shopping and leisure activities as Russia celebrates Orthodox Christmas, with a non-working day at the beginning of the month.
However, 2024 will be different. Davidsen said the drop was 43% compared to January 2023, when 7,604 intersections were counted.
The decrease compared to December 2023 was 22%.
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In addition to cross-border shoppers, Norway also allows Russian nationals with Finnish Schengen visas to transit through Storskog. But Russians are prohibited from driving private cars into Europe, and there is no public transport between the Norwegian border and Finnish Lapland, complicating travel.
Unlike Strskog, Estonia saw a significant increase at the Narva checkpoint.
“Since the beginning of this year, we have crossed the border 10,000 times. This is a really significant increase,” Tarmo Hütt of the Estonian Border Guard told Finnish news agency STT.
Before Finland closed its border with Russia, the Narva crossing recorded around 200 crossings per month by Finnish residents.
Finnish border guards in Lapland announced in January that no illegal immigrants from Russia had been detected. Further south, migrants from the Middle East waded through the snow into Finland on January 12th and 25th.
Surveillance along the northern border near Raja Giuseppi and Sara continues to be strengthened with the support of personnel from the European Border Protection Agency Frontex.
