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Finland completed a 200-kilometre security fence along its border with Russia, strengthening NATO’s longest frontier with a country’s accused of intensified hybrid attacks on Europe.
The project was launched after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine transformed Finland’s security environment and prompted the country to abandon decades of military non-alignment and join NATO in April 2023.
Later that year, more than 1,300 migrants without visas arrived at Finland’s eastern border. Helsinki accused Moscow of “hybrid warfare” by orchestrating the movement of third-country nationals towards the frontier, a charge the Kremlin denied.
Finland shut its land border with Russia in late 2023. Apart from a brief reopening of two crossings that December, the frontier has remained closed ever since.
“Today, it is calm but tense, and we really don’t know about tomorrow,” Interior Minister Mari Rantanen told reporters on Monday at a media event near the Nuijamaa border crossing in south-eastern Finland.
“It can change really rapidly and that is why we need to be very prepared.”
The 4.5-metre-high fence has been built in sections and is equipped with cameras and sensors.
It covers 200 kilometres of Finland’s 1,340-kilometre frontier with Russia, with most of the barrier concentrated in the southeast.
“This is one part of our border security and it is helping us for surveillance, but also keeping people out of Finnish territory if needed,” Rantanen said.
The new fence cost €356 million, with an estimated €2-3 million in annual maintenance costs, according to Finnish border authorities.
Despite rapid advances in drone technology, a physical barrier was still “viewed as the best solution for crowd control,” Border Guard project manager Erkki Matilainen said.
Rantanen said the fence could be extended further and called for greater EU financial support for countries along the bloc’s eastern frontier.
“What we particularly need is EU funding for eastern member states so that projects like this can be financed,” she said.
Last week, Helsinki proposed extending its Border Security Act until the end of 2028.
The legislation allows Finland, under exceptional circumstances, to restrict the reception of asylum applications in limited areas of the border when its sovereignty or national security is deemed to be under threat.
The law has proved controversial, with legal experts warning that it risks breaching Finland’s international human rights obligations and EU law.
Similar barriers have been built elsewhere along NATO and the EU’s eastern flank, as countries bordering Russia and Belarus strengthen their frontiers.