People arriving at the Salla border crossing in Finland on Wednesday. Photograph: Lehtikuva/Reuters
Speaking during a meeting in Stockholm of Nordic and Baltic defence ministers, Hanno Pevkur, Estonia’s defence minister, claimed the hundreds of people who had arrived at the borders of the two countries in recent weeks were a “fully state-orchestrated” operation by Moscow.
Latvia’s defence minister, Andris Sprūds, went a step further, blaming the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, who he described as the “puppet master”.
Since the beginning of November about 800 refugees and migrants have entered Finland, according to the Finnish border guard, prompting authorities to close all but one border crossing and accept support from the European border guard agency Frontex. Estonia accused Moscow of mounting “a hybrid attack operation” on Europe’s eastern border on Wednesday after 75 people attempted to enter the country in the space of a few days, a significant increase on the usual numbers.
At a press conference in a grand room at Karlberg Palace in the Swedish capital, Pevkur said: “Regarding the migrant flow, this is fully state-orchestrated. In Russia there is a border zone you cannot enter without permission from the FSB. So by accident, all these hundreds of migrants have ended up in one border crossing point in Finland with bicycles during the winter? Come on, seriously.”
He added: “They are coming from Yemen, they are coming from Syria, they are coming from Somalia, and at the end of the day they end up somewhere in the high north at the border crossing point with Finland … This is not very plausible.”
However, refugee advocates have warned that closing borders will lead to asylum seekers being forced to take more dangerous and deadly routes to seek sanctuary.
Sprūds said “there [was] no doubt about who is behind” the arrival of asylum seekers on Finish and Estonian borders. “Clearly there is one architect … puppet master, it’s Mr Putin,” he said.
https://www.theguardian.com/wo...