For the past two months, hundreds of refugees from the Middle East have been crossing the Russian-Finnish border. Nearly 1.5 thousand of them have applied for asylum in the EU. As it turned out, Russian security services had a hand in it.
According to The Insider journalists, information about the route across the Russian-Finnish border was spread on social media and messengers. The Russian visas for migrants are issued in Syria. Smugglers charge about $4,000 – $5,000 for this service. Another option for migrants is to enroll in Russian universities even without knowing Russian. All new students get Russian student visas. This is much cheaper.
Once they arrive in Russia, migrants head to the Finnish border. There, they get help from Russian law enforcement officers, the newspaper’s sources say. They sell bikes to refugees in bulk, and border guards let them enter the neutral zone without Schengen visas.
The sources of The Insider say that such a route of migrants would not be possible without the assistance of Russian security forces. They also say that they were contacted by smugglers who had previously worked in the Belarusian direction and offered to cooperate.
As a reminder, the migrant crisis on the border between Belarus and the EU started in the spring of 2021, when thousands of migrants from the Middle East and Africa tried to get into Western Europe through Belarus. It seems that Russia decided to follow the example of its ally country to put more pressure on the EU.
