by Looming among the drifts of snow on the Finnish-Russian border is a symbol of Moscow’s biggest provocation yet toward NATO’s newest member: a pile of broken bicycles.
The rickety bicycles are sold for hundreds of dollars on the Russian side to asylum seekers from as far away as Syria and Somalia. They are then encouraged (sometimes forced, according to Finnish guards) to cross the border. The Finns say it is a hybrid war campaign against their country, using some of the most desperate people in the world, just as it is taking a new position in a changing world order.
“Some of the bikes didn’t even have pedals; sometimes they linked arms to help each other keep moving,” said Ville Kuusisto, a senior sergeant with the Finnish border guard, at the crossing near the Russian city of Vyborg.
As Finns vote Sunday for a new president, who will be responsible for foreign policy and act as commander in chief, Finland has become obsessed with its 830-mile border, the longest of any NATO country with Russia. How the Finns confront the challenges there is critical not only for them, but also for their new allies on both sides of the Atlantic.
The presidential election, now in its second and final round, is the first since Finland officially joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization last year after decades of non-alignment, seeking to bolster its own security after the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Russia warned Finland of “countermeasures” to its accession, which the Finns suspect they are now seeing in the form of infrastructure sabotage and cyber attacks. But it is the arrival of some 1,300 “human weapons,” as Finnish politicians have described them, in recent months that has sparked the most public attention and anxiety.
European officials have repeatedly raised the alarm that Russia and its allies are encouraging migrants to cross their borders, and many worry the aim is to destabilize European governments and stoke discord in a deeply divided bloc. on how to handle immigration.
In December, Finland closed all its crossings with Russia. Now, it is preparing a law that, according to Finnish media, could include provisions allowing Finland to force people back across the border, a practice known as “pushbacks,” which is illegal under European and international law. Finnish officials have so far declined to comment on such measures.
The two presidential candidates heading into the final round on Sunday – Pekka Haavisto of the left-leaning Greens and Alexander Stubb of the centre-right – have drawn a hard line not only against Moscow, but also against asylum seekers. .
“People clearly see this Russian game,” Haavisto said in an interview. When asked how he felt about calls for possible returns, he said humanitarian laws prohibiting returns may need to be changed to recognize what he described as a new form of hybrid warfare.
Stubb said the force on the border was necessary because “the only thing Putin and Russia understand is power, usually pure power,” referring to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.
Whoever wins on Sunday will take the lead in shaping Finland’s new role in NATO. But the issue of migration is now likely to absorb much of his attention, something security experts say could be an intentional distraction.
“This border issue is not the most pressing issue at the moment, but it is an issue that will consume the bandwidth of the future president and the Finnish government,” said Matti Pesu, a security analyst at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs.
The crossings into Finland are the latest version of the lethal border policy that has unfolded since 2021, when Belarus, a veritable satrapy of Moscow, offered entry to thousands of migrants, allowing them to cross into Poland. Many ended up trapped between the two countries, beaten by border guards, who forced them to cross the border from one side to the other.
This is not the first time an influx has hit the country: there were surges in 2015 and 2016, when more than a million people headed to Europe, mostly fleeing the war in Syria and ending up in Germany. But since then, the border has been largely quiet.
Finnish officials say that, contrary to a previous agreement between the two countries, Russia is now allowing people without Finnish visas to pass through its checkpoints.
Finnish border guards said that when they called their counterparts last year to complain, the Russians insisted they were simply following procedures and could not deny people the right to cross.
Moayed Salami, 36, a Syrian who arrived at the crossing in November, said his experience showed that Russia was clearly using asylum seekers as pawns, but willing to do so.
He and seven other applicants interviewed, all of whom arrived before Finland closed its border, described being escorted through three levels of Russian checkpoints, where their passports were taken and their entry visas to Russia were cancelled. He and some others said Russian authorities followed them to the last stretch before the border.
“What I keep telling the Finnish media, when they say Russia is exploiting us, is that it doesn’t matter,” Salami said. “How could I? We needed an outlet. “If we had to flee via Mars, we would do it.”
Maria Zacharova, a spokeswoman for Russia’s Foreign Ministry, has said the accusation that Russia was deliberately facilitating migrants was not only false, but also “another example of the West’s double standards or lack of standards at all.” “.
Ahead of Sunday’s election, the crossings forced a debate in Finland about what the risks of these arrivals really are for the NATO member.
Finland’s security and intelligence services have said publicly that Russia could try to recruit some migrants as spies, but they have not shared any evidence to support this hypothesis.
Others say the risk is that Finland will undermine its image of itself as a nation that shares liberal values and acts in accordance with international conventions on asylum.
“It is Russia that is trying to turn us against our own values,” said Iro Sarkka, a fellow at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs. “We claim to be a liberal democracy, with a rules-based international order, and then we don’t even respect those treaties?”
On Wednesday, Finland’s popular outgoing president, Sauli Niinisto, argued that humanitarian law was being used as a “Trojan horse” for those trying to cross.
The European Commissioner for Human Rights, as well as Finland’s own human rights ombudsman, have warned that Finland risks violating humanitarian protections if it does not also offer places for people to make asylum claims.
“These actors probably view this issue from the side,” said Interior Minister Mari Rantanen. “But as a government, we have to look at the bigger picture. We also have to take care of our national security, because no one else will.”
Finland is using drones and plans to build several stretches of 13-foot-high fences along 125 miles of the southern border, with the goal of getting migrants to cross at specific points that can be monitored. With the help of Frontex, the European Union’s border agency, they have reinforced technical surveillance, including heat sensors and cameras.
For now, Finland’s lockdowns have blocked most new arrivals. But Marko Saareks, deputy division chief of the Finnish Border Guard, said hundreds, if not thousands, of asylum seekers who are stuck in Russian border towns can still try to walk through the forest, especially when spring arrives.
More than 30 people have already undertaken life-threatening winter hikes, including Rakan Esmail and Abdullah al-Ali, who are from the Syrian city of Kobani.
Two weeks ago, they said, smugglers took them deep into the forest in frigid nighttime temperatures and then robbed them at gunpoint of the last $6,000 they had borrowed for the trip.
“They just yelled at us: ‘Let’s go die!’ and he left,” Esmail, 20, recalled.
They almost did it. With only their pajamas under their pants and jackets for extra warmth, they trudged through thigh-deep banks of snow until they reached the Finnish side and knocked on the door of a small wooden cabin. Using Google Translate, they said, they begged their elderly, lonely inhabitant to call them an ambulance and the border patrol.
Their brush with frozen death frightened them, but it was no deterrent.
When told that asylum seekers like him were described as human weapons, Mr. Esmail was shocked. “We’re not weapons,” he said, shaking his head. “We are simply human.”
johanna lemola contributed reports from Helsinki and Nuijamaa, and Emma Bubola From london.
