The Finnish parliament on Wednesday cleared the way for NATO accession. In view of the Russian offensive war against Ukraine, Finland, like neighboring Sweden, applied for membership in the military alliance in May 2022. After a long period of non-alignment, this was a historic step for the two Scandinavian countries. For Finland, there is also the fact that it has a border with Russia that is about 1,340 kilometers long.
All 30 current NATO members must ratify the two countries’ admission. 28 of them have been doing so for a long time, but Turkey and Hungary have not. The parliament in Budapest wants to vote on it next week and deliberations in the parliament started on Wednesday.
However, Turkey has been blocking for quite some time. She justifies this attitude mainly by the fact that, in her opinion, Sweden is taking insufficient action against terrorist organisations.
Finland is already building a fence
Finland has already started building a 200 km long and three meter high fence on the border with Russia. After clearing the forest, road construction and the actual fencing should begin in March, the Finnish border guard said on Tuesday. According to the border guard, the first part of the fence starts in Imatra in the southeast of the country and stretches for three kilometers. So it should be ready by the end of June.
Another 70 kilometers of fence must be installed by 2025. In total, Finland wants to strengthen about 200 kilometers of its 1,300-kilometer-long border with Russia and plans to cost about 380 million euros to do so. The three meter high fence will be fitted with barbed wire and in some places with night vision cameras, lighting and loudspeakers.
Source: Krone
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