'If necessary, closing the entire eastern border is possible,' Interior Minister Mari Rantanen said in a statement. Raja-Jooseppi opened its gates for traffic at 0800 GMT on Friday and stayed open for four hours, the Border Guard said.īut Helsinki signalled that this too could be shut. Having shut four border stations last week, Finland closed three more overnight for a month, leaving open only its northernmost one, Raja-Jooseppi, located in the Arctic region. 'It is not at this moment a question of asylum seekers, it is a question of hybrid attack and national security,' he said. 'We want to send a clear message to Russia: this must stop,' Orpo told a press conference. Finland infuriated Russia earlier this year when it joined NATO, ending decades of military non-alignment, due to the war in Ukraine. Helsinki says Moscow is funnelling them to the border in retaliation for its decision to increase defence cooperation with the United States, a charge the Kremlin denies. More than 800 migrants from nations including Afghanistan, Kenya, Morocco, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria and Yemen have entered Finland via Russia in recent weeks, an increase from less than one per day previously, according to the Finnish Border Guard. HELSINKI (Reuters) - Russia must stop sending asylum seekers across its frontier into Finland in what amounts to a 'hybrid attack', Finnish Prime Minister Petteri Orpo said on Friday, after the Nordic nation temporarily shut all border passenger crossings bar one.

Who stars in passenger 57