No border, large or small, can be controlled without the cooperation of both sides. This is as true of the U.S.-Mexican border as it is of the Sino-Russian border.
The management of the Soviet-Finnish border was the result of a gradual process that began after World War II. The first train from Finland to Leningrad ran in 1953, but a direct line between Helsinki and Moscow was not opened until 1975. Finnair was the first Western airline to start flying to Moscow in 1956, while Finnish tourists traveled to Leningrad by bus for the first time only in 1958. This evolving cooperation, based on strict procedures, resulted in a border management culture that survived the collapse of the Soviet Union. That changed in 2015 when Russia started pushing undocumented third-country nationals over the border. It was a breach of confidence and a turning point.
When Finland joined NATO in 2023, it doubled the length of the alliance’s border with Russia. At 1,343 kilometers, the Finnish-Russian border is well established and precisely demarcated. Parts of it date back to the 1595 Treaty of Teusina between Sweden and Muscovy. The last changes were made in the 1947 Paris Peace Treaty between Finland and the Soviet Union.
My British colleague in Moscow once asked me if we, the Finns, had relatives on the other side of the border. This is true of almost all European borders—but not the Finnish-Russian one. The reason is that the entire population of 400,000 in Finnish Karelia was evacuated by the retreating Finnish army, first at the end of the Winter War in 1940 and then after the subsequent Continuation War (waged by Finland and Germany against the Soviets following Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941) ended with the Moscow Armistice in September 1944. Unlike in Alsace-Lorraine or Schleswig, where civilians stayed put despite enemy occupation, the Finns chose to flee rather than live under Soviet rule, even setting fire to their homes during the Winter War before heading west. In other words, the war did not create a Finnish irredenta on Russian territory. The evacuees were settled within a few years and there were no refugee camps in post-war Finland. This is crucial to understanding Finnish-Soviet relations after the war.
In his book How Finland Survived Stalin, Kimmo Rentola notes that immediately after the signing of the Moscow Peace Treaty on March 12, 1940, Stalin’s security police, the NKVD, set up an operational center in occupied Vyborg, Finland’s second city before the war. A notorious interrogator from Moscow headquarters was assigned to keep the locals under control. But there was no one left to terrorize. It’s not known who dared report this to Stalin. His foreign minister, Vyacheslav Molotov, was reportedly “painfully shaken” when the Soviets found Vyborg completely empty. “Do they really take us for such barbarians?” he exclaimed.
A Working Arrangement
Even before its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, it was clear that Russia had problems with most of its neighbors, though less so with Finland. Immediately after World War II, a border zone of up to 3 kilometers had been established on the Finnish side to prevent unnecessary traffic and provocations.
The new border regime was consolidated by the end of the 1950s. The 1944 Moscow Armistice stipulated that a naval base on the Porkkala peninsula, 30 kilometers west of Helsinki, would be leased to the Soviet Union for fifty years. That created a border within Finland itself that couldn’t be fully controlled. The early return of the base to Finland in 1956 was therefore crucial. By the end of the 1950s, attempts by Finnish-speaking KGB agents to recruit locals near the border were gradually coming to an end.
The procedures that emerged were strict. Informal contacts across the border were forbidden. If necessary, designated officers would meet at border crossings and regular contacts were maintained between the commander of Finnish border guards and the head of the KGB border guards. The arrangements worked well, partly because both sides guarded the border against crossings from the east. When Soviet refugees sought asylum in Finland, this was always handled through diplomatic channels and never at the border or by the border authorities. These incidents were sometimes genuine and sometimes provocations. At times Finland was under considerable political pressure from the Soviet authorities to send the refugees back.
At the time of EU enlargement, Finnish border guards helped the Baltic states set up national border guards, while German border guards did the same for countries in Central Europe. But when they joined NATO, and partly because of financial constraints, some of the Baltic states merged their border guards with the police, while Russia’s border guards are and have always been part of the military and, since 2003, once again part of Russia’s Federal Security Service, the FSB. Finland’s border guards are also part of the armed forces, though in peacetime they are under the Interior Ministry. The Baltic states’ different approach explains why they have never established a functioning relationship with the FSB border guards.
Like its border with Finland, Russia’s border with Norway has caused few problems. Originally demarcated by Sweden-Norway and the Russian Empire in 1826, the 198-kilometer land border was reestablished in 1945 after the Red Army withdrew from Norway, and Finland lost Petsamo (Pechenga) and access to the Barents Sea.
There are notable differences between the Russia-Finland and Russia-Norway borders. First, there is no border buffer zone on the Norwegian side, which means that tourists can approach the actual border line. Second, Finland and Norway had very different experiences in World War II. In 1941, Finland joined Germany to fight the Soviet Union, while Norway was occupied by Germany. After the Moscow Armistice, Finland turned its weapons on German troops in northern Finland. By early November 1944, the Red Army—with some Norwegian volunteers in its ranks—had liberated the eastern part of Finnmark, a county in northern Norway.
The Red Army was duly celebrated in post-war Norway, with numerous monuments erected in its honor. In Sør-Varanger, a municipality in eastern Finnmark, politicians tended to be pro-Soviet and left-wing. Cross-border activities and personal relationships reflected the legacy of the war. Moscow took full advantage of this, even after the collapse of the Soviet Union, attempting to create a Norwegian culture of remembrance and a steady stream of local, regional, and even national tributes to the Red Army’s role in liberating Norway. The situation in Finland is different. Finnish war memorials are cemeteries for soldiers killed fighting the Red Army, and can be found in even the smallest villages. It was not until the 1960s that Finnish-Soviet twin towns were established and tourism flourished (albeit in one direction until the collapse of the Soviet Union).
NATO Takes Shape
Stalin’s letter to Finnish President Juho Kusti Paasikivi in February 1948 proposing a friendship treaty was seen in Oslo as a sign of things to come. Norway’s political elite had not forgotten Molotov’s demand in 1944 that the Norwegian government-in-exile hand over Bear Island (midway between the Norwegian mainland and the Svalbard archipelago) and revise the 1920 Svalbard Treaty. Stalin’s letter and the signing of the Russian-Finnish Friendship Treaty in April 1948 prompted Sweden to propose a neutral Scandinavian defense alliance with Denmark and Norway. But both countries rejected Sweden’s offer, opting instead for an alliance with the Western powers and thus becoming founding members of NATO. Oslo and Copenhagen were quick to impose peacetime restrictions on their NATO membership (unlike Finland and Sweden when they joined seventy-five years later) after Moscow raised concerns about foreign Western bases being deployed on Norwegian and Danish soil.
This issue was a constant thorn in relations with Moscow, with the Soviets attempting to dictate Norwegian and Danish policy on the matter. Norway’s policy on foreign bases was never set in stone, but included self-imposed restrictions on airspace near the Soviet border. No reconnaissance flights were permitted east of the Porsanger Fjord, and no non-Norwegian fighter aircraft were allowed to cross the Alta River. This seems excessive today, given that neighboring Finland joined NATO without any self-imposed restrictions, least of all on the border. It was also decided in 1957 that no nuclear weapons would be stationed in Norway in peacetime.
Economically, the most important part of the Norwegian-Russian border is in the Barents Sea. The area covers one of the most important fishing grounds in the northern hemisphere, and the continental shelf is rich in hydrocarbons. Bilateral delimitation negotiations dragged on for more than forty years until 2010, when Russia’s then president Dmitry Medvedev surprised his Norwegian hosts during a state visit by accepting a compromise that had been on the table for decades. The agreement divided the 175,000 square kilometers of disputed water into two roughly equal parts.
Meanwhile, the Svalbard archipelago remains a source of tension. In January 2022, an undersea telecommunications cable connecting Svalbard to the Norwegian mainland was mysteriously damaged. The 1920 Svalbard Treaty recognized Norwegian sovereignty over the archipelago, established the archipelago as a free economic zone, and restricted its use for military purposes. All its forty-eight signatory states are entitled to carry out commercial activities on the archipelago on a non-discriminatory basis, although all activities are subject to Norwegian law. The only remaining non-Norwegian commercial activity is that of the Russian coal mining company Arktikugol. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, its presence on Svalbard has provoked frequent political demonstrations and attempts to change the established rules.
Weaponizing Refugees
In 2015, the war in Syria created a refugee crisis in Western Europe. Tens of thousands of refugees arrived in Finland, mainly via the Swedish border in the north. This had the effect of unsettling Finnish politics. Russia took advantage of the crisis and in August 2015 began to bring busloads of third-country nationals first to the Norwegian border crossing at Storskog and later to two Finnish border posts in Lapland: Salla and Raja-Jooseppi.
This unprecedented move by the Russian authorities took Finland and Norway by surprise. By allowing third-country nationals to cross the Russian border without the necessary visas, Moscow wasn’t violating existing legal obligations, but it did break with the established practices and interpretations of post-war treaties and agreements. More importantly, it was a breach of confidence.
The scenes were dramatic and dangerous, and the numbers were significant: more than 5,000 illegal immigrants crossed into Norway and over 1,000 into Finland. Winter was approaching, with temperatures dropping to -40°C. Large families with small children made their way through the Arctic forest in decrepit cars and polar darkness to the Finnish border, or had to cycle to Norway.
Russia’s unprecedented operation relied on criminal support. Subcontracted smugglers organized flights from Moscow and St. Petersburg to Murmansk and Kandalaksha, arranged accommodation, and sold these third-country nationals cars and bicycles at extortionate prices. Most of the refugees had not come straight from the conflict zone in Syria but were people with families and valid residence permits who had spent years studying and working in Russia, and were now being forced to leave.
This is a prime example of Russia’s habit of creating a problem and then claiming the credit for finding a solution. Negotiations were difficult because Russia insisted that it couldn’t deny third-country nationals the right to leave Russia and that existing treaties didn’t require it to prevent border crossings.
The issue wasn’t resolved until it reached the highest levels of government, with Finnish President Sauli Niinistö threatening to cancel a visit to Moscow. Before that could happen, a fig-leaf agreement was reached, insisted upon by Moscow, allowing only Finnish, Russian, and Belarusian nationals to use the two northernmost border crossings.
We can only guess and speculate as to why Russia decided to treat its closest neighbors this way a year after the annexation of Crimea and the start of the war in Donbas in 2014. The unsettling effects of the 2015 European refugee crisis, and in particular the political turmoil it caused in Germany, likely prompted Russia to demonstrate that it could weaponize its borders with Finland and Norway at will.
This was reckless political opportunism that arrogantly underestimated the two smaller neighbors and sent a not-so-subtle message to Finland: Norway’s NATO membership did not protect it from this hostile act. According to the Swedish historian Kristian Gerner, Russian foreign policy has traditionally categorized states into two types: Kazan and Manchu (China). The first type is either occupied and annexed or bullied (Kazan was conquered by Russia under Ivan the Terrible in 1552). With the second type, the key is to recognize its size and power and treat it as an equal.
Lasting Consequences
Russia’s miscalculation in 2015 was immediately apparent and now stands out as a classic Kremlin mistake. Its breach of Finnish confidence did more than destroy a functioning cooperation. It heightened Finland’s perception of threat and prompted a fundamental overhaul of Finnish intelligence legislation that was completed in 2019. The annexation of Crimea in 2014 had already ushered in a new era of intense Finnish military cooperation with Sweden and NATO, and bilaterally with the United States and Britain. In April 2022, two months after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Sweden and Finland applied for NATO membership.
In 2021, Finland watched the unrest on the Polish and Lithuanian borders with Belarus with growing unease. The systematic busing of refugees to those borders was similar to what Finland and Norway had experienced in 2015–2016, only this time there were also violent attempts to cross the border. But it wasn’t until the fall of 2023 that Russia resumed pushing large numbers of people to the Finnish border (this time, the Norwegian border was left alone). In response, Finland first closed some of the border crossings, and then the whole border in December 2023, after groups of refugees tried to enter through the remaining crossings. The Russian-Norwegian border at Storskog remains open, but was restricted in 2022 and again in May 2024. Border crossings in Latvia and Estonia remain open.
Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 had a profound effect on Finnish-Russian relations. Not only did it lead to Finland and Sweden joining NATO, but it also marked a fundamental break in the relationship. Finnish and Russian border authorities now maintain only rudimentary, technical contacts. Not since the hostile early 1920s or the World War II years have relations between Helsinki and Moscow been so poor. Finland sees the weaponization of migration as a form of hybrid warfare and has introduced legislation to combat it, even turning back refugees under strict rules as a temporary measure.
For a sovereign state, securing its borders is fundamental. Under normal circumstances, this requires cooperation with the neighboring country. Lack of cooperation, or even the absence of a responsible counterpart, makes this task extremely difficult and means resorting to harsh measures, be it on the Mediterranean coast or on the Russian border.
