Finland accuses Russia of deliberately ushering migrants to the border zone, which is normally heavily controlled by Russia’s Federal Security Service.
ADVERTISEMENTFinland has announced it's once again shutting all the crossings with Russia due to a massive influx of undocumented migrants.
“The phenomenon has started again", Interior Minister Mari Rantanen told parliament on Thursday, "and we are going to close the entire border".
Helsinki has accused the Kremlin of using migrants in alleged acts of “hybrid warfare" aimed at destabilising Finland.
The Kremlin has denied that Russia is encouraging migrants to enter Finland and said that it regrets the closures.
Finland's U-turn after Tuesday's announcement
The Finnish-Russian border stretches over 1,340 kilometres.
The new shutdown comes only two days after Helsinki announced the reopening of two crossing points, south east, out of eight in total.
In November alone, over 900 migrants arrived at the Finnish border without proper visas or valid documentation. The vast majority of them are believed to be from Syria, Somalia and Yemen.
While Finnish border officials initially said migrants used Russia merely as a transit country on their way from their home countries to the EU, authorities later said that a clear majority of them were living — working or studying — in Russia with legal visas.