North Karelia force says fence dividing Finland and Russia is no Berlin Wall – but it is now a key geopolitical faultline

… In an attempt to strike a note of optimism, he added: “We found a solution in 1944 and I’m sure that we will be able to find a solution in 2025.”

Matti Pitkäniitty, the commander of the North Karelia border guard district, believes illegal border crossings involving Russian defectors are likely to become a growing problem. Pointing to a gap in the vegetation where an old Finnish country lane passed through before the border was redrawn in 1940 after the Russo-Finnish war, resulting in Helsinki ceding part of Karelia, Pitkäniitty said most civilians trying to cross illegally preferred to stick to roads, limiting the number of potential routes.

“People are afraid of those thick forests here,” he said. But this would not be an issue for a Russian military professional trying to flee the war in Ukraine. “Now, one of the risks we are facing are the military-trained personnel fleeing the war. They of course know how to navigate through the woods and how to survive there if they need to stay out of sight for a couple of days.”