Finland said around 160 people who applied for asylum on its eastern border with Russia last year have since gone missing.
According to the Finnish Migration Service, there were 1,323 asylum applications at the country’s eastern border between August and December last year, of which around 900 were in November and more than 300 in December.
“Currently, 160 people are missing from reception centres, and most of them are unaccounted for,” Antti Lehtinen, head of the Asylum Department at Finland’s Immigration Service, said on Friday, Reuters reported.
“Of course, most of these 160 people may have continued to migrate to other countries, but they have not yet applied for asylum in that country,” Lehtinen added, adding that all of Finland’s He pointed out that asylum seekers are given European fingerprints. Fingerprint database.
On January 11, the Finnish government announced a response to accusations that Moscow has pushed migrants and asylum seekers to the periphery in order to sow discord in return for Russia’s participation in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) military alliance. Meanwhile, it has been decided to extend the land border closure with Russia until February 11th.
The Kremlin has repeatedly denied the claims, and Russia’s Foreign Ministry said an earlier decision by Finland to close a number of border checkpoints was “unequivocally” provocative.