Putin has turned migrants into weapons of hybrid warfare

When Finland officially joined NATO in April this year as a consequence of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin threatened that it would respond with “counter measures”. Now, seven months later, it appears Putin is trying to take his revenge on its neighbour.

Over the past ten days, Finland has hurriedly been shutting its border crossings with Russia. On 18 November, Helsinki shut four; another three were closed on the 24th. Now just one checkpoint along the 830 mile border - the most northern Raja-Jooseppi crossing - remains open, although according to the Finnish press it may not stay so for long.

The reason for Finland’s rush to shut down its crossings is the sudden surge in the number of third-country asylum seekers arriving at the border. Since the beginning of November alone, some 900 migrants from countries including Morocco, Somalia and Afghanistan have crossed over from Russia with the aim of claiming asylum in Finland, the country’s border agency has claimed. Helsinki has accused Russia of engaging in “hybrid warfare” by encouraging and aiding migrants to make the crossing in what it says are efforts to sow discord in the country and cultivate a new migrant crisis.

Finland’s actions have triggered a diplomatic row that is now threatening to escalate. The Kremlin audaciously denied its accusations, calling them “far-fetched”; the Finnish ambassador was summoned to the Russian Foreign Ministry last week to provide an explanation. Meanwhile the Finnish prime minister Petteri Orpo has declared he has no intention of personally negotiating with Russian president Vladimir Putin. 

Compared to the hundreds of thousands who arrive in Britain every year, a thousand or so migrants pitching up on Finland’s borders since mid-August may not seem like a number worth the worsening row. However, with a population of just about 5.4 million, such an irregular increase in migration into the country is enough to give Finland’s government cause for concern. 

Indeed, on the last day before the additional three crossings were closed, 58 migrants turned up at the Salla crossing alone. A further 55 who missed the chance to cross there were helpfully sent to Raja-Jooseppi by the local Russian authorities. 

Finland claims to have evidence supporting their accusations. These migrants are believed to be arriving in Russia and Belarus with valid visas, before being transported to the Finnish border by people traffickers. There, Russian border control guards have been allowing them to pass to Finnish territory without the correct legal paperwork to enter the country. 

Whether these border guards were initially operating on the instructions of the state, or simply out of their own greed and corruption is unclear. What is evident, though, is that the Kremlin has clearly sought to capitalise on the situation, at best doing nothing to prevent the flow of people and at worst actively now facilitating it.

Finland’s European allies are taking the situation very seriously: Estonia’s defence minister Hanno Pevkur has branded Moscow’s actions “weaponised illegal immigration”. Meanwhile, Norway has said it too would be willing to close its borders with Russia if targeted in a similar way. The EU’s border agency Frontex announced on Monday that 50 guards will be deployed to help patrol the Russo-Finnish border, with the first set to arrive on Wednesday.

There is precedent for the Kremlin using similar destabilisation tactics in the past: in 2015 and 2016, following an increase in joint training exercises between Finland and Nato, a similar surge of third-country migrants occurred at the border. In 2021, too, Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko orchestrated a deliberate campaign – almost certainly with the Kremlin’s blessing – to encourage and facilitate the illegal passage of several thousand migrants into Lithuania, Poland and Latvia from his borders. 

Putin is under no illusion that such a tactic would cause the West to crumble by itself. But by putting further strain on European countries whose politicians are already feeling the pressure to deal with increasingly high migration, his hope is to chip away at Western cohesion, causing chaos and sowing distrust among the native populations. 

The unexpected increase in the number of migrants not only poses Finland with obvious security issues, but also with a humanitarian problem: temperatures along the border now regularly fall below -10C and many migrants have reportedly been arriving ill-dressed and underfed. 

The main hold up at the moment in closing the last open border crossing is the Finnish government’s concern over breaching its human rights obligations towards asylum seekers. Polling suggests that currently Finns are broadly supportive of the government’s actions. 

Closing the Raja-Jooseppi crossing will likely stop the flow of migrants into Finland, but with the Kremlin likely to stew over the row, not to mention Finland’s hawkish support of Ukraine, diplomatic relations between the two countries are unlikely to improve any time soon. The new iron curtain that has fallen between Russia and the West has just become a little more impenetrable.