Russia appears to be employing a hybrid warfare tactic known to artificially create a migrant crisis on the Finnish border.
In its latest assessment of Russia’s offensive campaign, ISW says: Russia’s apparent hybrid warfare tactics on the Russian-Finnish border are similar to Russia and Belarus’ creation of a migrant crisis on the border Polish in 2021 and probably aims to destabilize NATO in the same way.
Finnish authorities have closed checkpoints on Finland’s southeastern border with Russia after Finnish border guards reported an influx of around 300 asylum seekers, mainly from Iraq, from Yemen, from Somalia and Syria, had arrived at the Finnish border from Russia since September 2023.
During a two-day period in November, there were as many migrant crossings as between mid-July and November.
Finland’s prime minister said Russian border guards were escorting or transporting migrants to the Finnish border, a claim denied by the Kremlin.
ISW previously assessed that the Kremlin enabled, or perhaps directly controlled, Belarus’ artificial creation of a migrant crisis on its border with Poland in 2021, when Belarusian security personnel assisted thousands of migrants from the Middle East to cross the Belarusian border to go to Poland.
The Kremlin exploited the manufactured crisis of 2021 to falsely accuse NATO of aggression against Belarus.