At the end of August, Finland begins raising a fence on Russian border

The first phase will cover 70 kilometres

It looks like the construction of a border fence with Russia is moving in earnest on the part of Finland. At the end of August, the EU country will begin with the first phase of raising a planned border fence, which will cover an area of 70 kilometres.

In fact, preparation work has already begun in the form of cleaning up 45 kilometres of land from trees where the fence will be located.

Additionally, a lot of preparatory work has already been done, including consultations with hundreds of landowners. The grand-scale project also includes the publishing of open tenders for supplying materials, electricity and telecommunications connections.

Furthermore, a 25-metre-wide strip stretching for about 120 kilometres will be cleared in order to make border control easier.

Last year, the Nordic Country tried out a pilot fence project

The first phase of the project will see the raising of a fence near the Nuijamaa border crossing between Finland and Russia. That checkpoint is located in the south of the border and what’s interesting is that in that area there’s also a large lake that forms part of the border, shared between the two countries.

The initiation of the grand-scale project follows an initial pilot last year, which saw the raising of a 3 km stretch of fence near a border crossing checkpoint in Imatra.

The first part of the fence will be completed in 2025 and the main part of the whole project by summer 2026. The plan is not to cover the entire 1,200-km border with a fence but rather to place 200 kilometres of fences near the key border points where the push from illegal migration has been the most intense.