{"id":1654855,"date":"2022-09-23T08:54:47","date_gmt":"2022-09-23T12:54:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1654855"},"modified":"2022-09-23T08:55:02","modified_gmt":"2022-09-23T12:55:02","slug":"finland-considers-barring-russians-from-entering-as-border-traffic-grows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/finland-considers-barring-russians-from-entering-as-border-traffic-grows\/","title":{"rendered":"Finland Considers Barring Russians from Entering as Border Traffic Grows"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">20<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Ffinland-considers-barring-russians-from-entering-as-border-traffic-grows%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1654855&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div id=\"\">\n<h2 class=\"visually-hidden\">Article content<\/h2>\n<p>VAALIMAA \u2014 Finland said on Thursday it was considering barring most Russians from entering the country as traffic across the border from its eastern neighbor \u201cintensified\u201d following President Vladimir Putin\u2019s order for a partial military mobilization.<\/p>\n<p>Finnish land border crossings have remained among the few entry points into Europe for Russians after a string of Western countries shut both physical frontiers and their air space to Russian planes in response to Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<div>\n<h2 class=\"visually-hidden\">Article content<\/h2>\n<p>Prime Minister Sanna Marin said on Thursday the government was assessing risks posed by individuals traveling through Finland, and was considering ways to sharply reduce Russian transit.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe government\u2019s will is very clear, we believe Russian tourism (to Finland) must be stopped, as well as transit through Finland,\u201d Marin told reporters.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI believe the situation needs to be reassessed after yesterday\u2019s news,\u201d she added, referring to Putin\u2019s partial mobilization order.<\/p>\n<p>The Russian president\u2019s announcement raised fears that some men of fighting age would not be allowed to leave Russia and prompted one-way flights out of the country to sell out fast.<\/p>\n<p>Finland opted to keep its frontier with Russia open following Moscow\u2019s Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine although it has cut back the number of consular appointments available to Russian travelers seeking visas.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<div>\n<h2 class=\"visually-hidden\">Article content<\/h2>\n<p>BORDER<\/p>\n<p>At the Vaalimaa border crossing, roughly three hours\u2019 drive from Russia\u2019s second-largest city St Petersburg, three lanes of cars each stretched for 300-400 meters (yards) at around 1:15 p.m. local time (1015 GMT), a border official told Reuters.<\/p>\n<p>The crossing is one of nine on Finland\u2019s 1,300-km (800-mile) border with Russia, the longest in the European Union.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTraffic at the Finnish-Russian border intensified during the night,\u201d the border guard\u2019s head of international affairs, Matti Pitkaniitty, said in a tweet. He told Reuters that border guards were ready at the nine checkpoints.<\/p>\n<p>Although traffic from Russia was busier than normal, the border guards said in a statement that it had not changed \u201calarmingly\u201d in recent days compared with pre-pandemic times.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<div>\n<h2 class=\"visually-hidden\">Article content<\/h2>\n<p>The statement warned that \u201cincorrect and misleading\u201d information was circulating on social media.<\/p>\n<p>At around 1730 local time (1530 GMT), traffic continued to flow, according to a Reuters witness, with cars stretching over four lanes, each for some 150 meters.<\/p>\n<p>A 34-year-old Russian man called Nikita, who did not give his last name, told Reuters he was going on holiday in southern Europe and said he was not sure if he would return to Russia.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI will make the decision when I\u2019m there,\u201d he said upon crossing the border.<\/p>\n<p>Border officials told Reuters a significant amount of Russians arriving were traveling on tourist visas. Tourists must present visas and documents that prove their onward itineraries such as plane tickets, hotel bookings or an invitation from a friend.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<div>\n<h2 class=\"visually-hidden\">Article content<\/h2>\n<p>As long as tourists can credibly show plans for return, such as return tickets, the border guards cannot check whether they actually plan to return, Elias Laine, the Vaalimaa border station\u2019s deputy chief, told Reuters.<\/p>\n<p>Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, the other EU countries that border Russian territory, began turning away Russian citizens from crossings at midnight on Monday, saying they should not travel while their country is at war with Ukraine.<\/p>\n<p>The three Baltic nations will offer no refuge to any Russians fleeing Moscow\u2019s mobilization of troops, their ministers said on Wednesday.<\/p>\n<p>Pitkaniitty said 4,824 Russians arrived in Finland via the eastern border on Wednesday, up from 3,133 a week earlier.<\/p>\n<p>In far northern Norway there had been no changes in the number of Russians crossing, a police official told Reuters. Norway is not a member of the EU. (Reporting by Stine Jacobsen in Copenhagen, Essi Lehto in Helsinki, Milla Nissi in Gdansk, Gwladys Fouche in Oslo and Andrius Sytas in Vilnius; writing by Stine Jacobsen and Gwladys Fouche, Editing by Terje Solsvik, Kim Coghill, Mark Heinrich, Catherine Evans, William Maclean)<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Article content VAALIMAA \u2014 Finland said on Thursday it was considering barring most Russians from entering the country as traffic across the border from its eastern neighbor \u201cintensified\u201d following<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1654855","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1654855","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1654855"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1654855\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1654855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1654855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1654855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}