Russia puts migrants on scooters and asks them to cross the border into Europe

Migrants appear on the border with Finland on scooters

Finland accused Russia of distributing bicycles and scooters to migrants to help them cross the border as part of a plan to destabilizing Europe.

Antti Hakkanen, Finland's defense minister, also accused the Kremlin of using its hybrid war «playbook» by encouraging migrants to enter the country. without the correct documents.

“Russia carried out unspecified interference at the border,” he said. “We know what Russia is doing.”

Helsinki has ordered the closure of four of eight crossing points with Russia, and the European Commission has pledged to send its border control unit to Finland.

Finnish officials said the timing of the influx of migrants from Russia was not coincidental. Finland joined NATO this year, angering the Kremlin, and will hold its first major naval exercise as a member of the Western military alliance on Monday.

Finnish media reported that 300 migrants, mostly young people from Syria and Yemen, Iraq, Iraq and Somalia, crossed the border into Finland from Russia this week, compared with almost zero in a normal week.

Most migrant routes to Europe pass through the Mediterranean or Central Europe rather than through more distant regions. and the inhospitable northern regions bordering Russia.

The video shows migrants arriving in groups at the border on cheap bicycles handed out Russians.

Finnish officials said their Russian counterparts are handing out cheap bicycles and scooters to migrants as people are prohibited from traveling between Russian and Finnish border points.

The video shows migrants arriving in groups of four or five at the cold, dark border crossings with Finland, riding or pushing their bikes or scooters.

At one checkpoint, Finnish police fired tear gas to push back a crowd of migrants who were initially denied entry. Photos show police and migrants still holding their bikes, arguing and jostling.

“We had to let these people into Finland because Russia wouldn’t take them back,” Captain Jouko Kinnunen, head of the border guard services. radio station, said the Finnish channel MTV.

Finland has an 830-mile border with Russia. Three of the four road border crossings with Russia remain open above the Arctic Circle, but Finnish media reported that migrants switched to using these border crossings once more accessible checkpoints in the southeast of the country were closed.

The Finnish government has threatened to close all crossings with Russia to block migrants, although human rights activists in the country say it is obliged to accept asylum seekers.

Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, said that Finland is now protects the EU.

“Russia’s instrumentalization of migrants is shameful. I thank the Finnish border guards for protecting our European borders,” she said.

Analysts have warned that the Kremlin is feeling increasingly confident after resisting a NATO-backed Ukrainian counter-offensive and testing Europe and NATO for weaknesses.

He identified migration as a key issue.

In 2022, Italian intelligence reports suggested that the Wagner Group, a unit of Kremlin mercenaries, organized migrant boats to be sent out of Libya, and in 2021 Belarus brought in thousands of migrants from the Middle East and Afghanistan and transported them to Poland and Lithuania. /p>

The Kremlin also tested Finland's response to migration in 2015 and 2016, when it pushed about 1,800 migrants into the country.

Russian military doctrine takes a broader hybrid approach to war than NATO. Analysts say this includes spreading disinformation, damaging civilian infrastructure and using migrants as weapons to destabilize their enemies.

Tensions in the Arctic region are rising as Russia increases the size of its military bases and tests more ballistic missiles. rockets. in the region since Finland joined NATO.

Russian media rejected Finnish accusations that the Kremlin orchestrated the influx of migrants, and said that the migrants were in Russia legally, mostly on student visas, and that private businessmen helped them get to the border and gave them bicycles.