Russian President Vladimir Putin has vowed \u2018problems\u2019 for Finland after he says the Nordic country was \u2018dragged into NATO\u2019 amid the war in Ukraine.<\/p>\n
\u2018Look, Finland was taken and dragged into NATO,\u2019 Putin said in a new on-camera interview. \u2018What did we have, some kind of dispute with Finland? All disputes, including those of a territorial nature in the middle of the 20th century, were all resolved a long time ago. We had the best, most heartfelt relations. Economically, everything was developing. Yes, in the timber industry, there were some problems linked to the necessity to develop timber processing within the country. But that was all. Just a small detail in reality.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018There weren\u2019t any problems, but now there will be,\u2019 he said, according to translated captions of the video interview. \u2018Because we\u2019ve now been forced to create a Leningrad military district and concentrate a certain number of military units there. Why do they need that? It\u2019s just nonsense. The same goes for other countries, including NATO countries. With whom did we have problems? Nobody. They\u2019re the ones who are artificially creating problems with us. Because they don\u2019t want such a competitor in the form of Russia. That\u2019s all there is to it.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, dozens of migrants crossed into Finland on Friday, hours before the reclosure of two southern crossing points on the border with Russia as the Nordic country experiences an influx of asylum-seekers. The Vaalimaa and Niirala crossings had reopened briefly Thursday after being shut down at the end of last month, along with Finland\u2019s six other posts on the border with Russia.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Finland blames Moscow for sending migrants to the border in an effort to destabilize the country, which joined NATO in April. Russia denies the accusation.<\/p>\n
At the end of November, Finnish Prime Minister Petteri Orpo\u2019s government opted to close the entire 830-mile border for at least two weeks over concerns that Moscow was using migrants to destabilize Finland in an alleged act of \u2018hybrid warfare.\u2019<\/p>\n
Finnish authorities say that nearly 1,000 migrants without proper visas or valid documentation had arrived at the border since August through the end of November, with more than 900 of them in November alone. The numbers are much higher than usual.<\/p>\n
Finland accuses Russia of deliberately ushering migrants \u2014 most of whom are seeking asylum in Finland \u2014 to the border areas, which are normally heavily controlled on the Russian side by the Federal Security Service, or FSB. The Kremlin has denied that Russia is encouraging migrants to enter Finland and has said that it regrets the Finnish border closures.<\/p>\n
Earlier in December, Finnish authorities said that the vast majority of the migrants who arrived in November hailed from three countries: Syria, Somalia and Yemen.<\/p>\n
Finland, a nation of 5.6 million people, makes up a significant part of NATO\u2019s northeastern flank and acts as the European Union\u2019s external border in the north.<\/p>\n
The Associated Press contributed to this report.<\/p>\n\n
Russian President Vladimir Putin has vowed \u2018problems\u2019 for Finland after he says the Nordic country was \u2018dragged into NATO\u2019 amid the war in Ukraine. \u2018Look, Finland was taken and dragged into NATO,\u2019 Putin said in a new on-camera interview. \u2018What did we have, some kind of dispute with Finland? All disputes, including those of a <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":12971,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-12970","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-politics"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12970","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12970"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12970\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12971"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}