Finland has started construction of a 200-kilometer-long fence on the Russian border, the country’s authorities said on Tuesday, as Helsinki fears that Moscow may use immigrant flows at the border for political purposes.

The work will start with deforestation and will progress in such a way that road construction and fence installation can begin in March, the Finnish Border Guard said in a statement.

The three-kilometer pilot project at the southeastern border crossing in Imatra is expected to be completed by the end of June, the statement adds. Also, the construction of additional 70 km, mainly in southeastern Finland, will take place between 2023 and 2025.

Finland started to build a fence on the border with Russia

According to Yle, a three-kilometer section of Russian-Finnish border near Imatra border crossing, a fence three meters high will be built. Barbed wire will be put on top of it.https://t.co/eEnH6GbUYm

— NEXTA (@nexta_tv) February 28, 2023

In total, Finland plans to fence 200 kilometers of its 1,300-kilometer border with Russia at a cost of around 380 million euros. The fence will be over three meters high with barbed wire on top, night vision cameras, lights, and loudspeakers.

Currently, Finland’s borders are mainly secured by light wooden fences, mainly designed to prevent animals from wandering to the wrong side.

Although the Finnish-Russian border “worked well” in the past, Brigadier Jari Tolpanen told AFP last November that the war in Ukraine had fundamentally changed the security situation.

As he noted, the border fence is necessary to stop large-scale illegal entries from Russian territory. Finland saw an influx of Russians in September after Russian President, Vladimir Putin, ordered the mobilization of reservists to fight in Ukraine.

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