Tervetuloa Suomeen!

Petersburg residents grabbed up all the appointments in July to apply for a Schengen visa at the Finnish visa center in the city after it was reported that all restrictions on crossing the border would be lifted.

Finland lifted all anti-covid restrictions on entering the country on June 30, and visa restrictions were lifted on July 1. The scheduling of appointments for processing visa applications was opened a month in advance, and in four days Petersburgers booked all the slots for dates up to and including July 29, writes Petersburg Patrol, citing a source in the visa center.

The source at the visa center could not rule out that “the management [would] add additional slots.” Usually, appointments to apply for visas were scheduled a week in advance.

Before the hype, Petersburgers who previously held two-year Schengen visas were issued them again without any problems.

The Finnish Interior Ministry conjectured that the lifting of restrictions would increase traffic from non-EU countries, in particular, on its eastern border, while the desire of Russians to visit Finland and the number of valid visas issued to Russian nationals would affect the volume of traffic.

Tour operators believe otherwise: the flow of tourists from the Russian Federation will be affected by difficulties with obtaining visas and exchanging currency. Aleksan Mkrtchyan, vice-president of the Alliance of Travel Agencies, noted that the opening of the land border is “certainly a good thing,” from which Finland and residents of Petersburg and the Leningrad Region would benefit. However, it would be Russians who already hold a valid Schengen visa who would be the first to go to Finland, he said.

“It is almost impossible to get a Finnish visa in the near future—[appointments at the visa center] are booked out almost till the end of August,” Mkrtchyan told Interfax.

Petersburgers will be able to travel in large numbers to Finland from July 15—the day on which Russia removes all restrictions on crossing the border, which were introduced in March 2020 due to Covid-19. Upon returning to the country from abroad, Russians will still have to take a PCR test.

In Finland, citizens of non-EU countries have not been required to have a vaccination certificate or a coronavirus test since July 1. Coronavirus testing will also no longer be carried out at border crossings.

Source: Delovoi Peterburg, 5 July 2022. Still from Veep courtesy of US News. Translated by the Russian Reader

The city of Lappeenranta would be prepared, if necessary, to offer its airport as a NATO base: “It will certainly be available if the Defense Forces so wish”

Lappeenranta has not discussed with the Finnish Defense Forces what investments would be involved in possible NATO membership, but in theory the city would welcome them.

A Ryanair jet plane on the tarmac at Lappeenranta Airport, 2 August 2019. Photo by the *Russian Reader*

The city of Lappeenranta aims to get the maximum benefit if Finland joins NATO.

Political decision-makers and officials in Lappeenranta have expressed the hope that, with membership, even a NATO base could be established in Lappeenranta.

According to Lappeenranta’s city manager, Kimmo Jarva, the idea has come about at a time when the debate on joining NATO has been lively, and because South Karelia is located on the frontier between Europe and Russia.

There has been no discussion of the matter in defense policy circles, nor has there been any discussion with the Defense Forces. However, the city of Lappeenranta hopes that the Defense Forces will make investments in South Karelia due to NATO membership.

“I’ve heard conjectures about the airport, among other things. I’m sure it’s available if the military would like it. As for whether there will be any changes in the locations of the Army Academy and the Defense Forces, I cannot say as I’m a layman,” Jarva says.

According to Jarva, the progress of Finland’s NATO membership bid has given hope to the whole of South Karelia. It brings a sense of security and confidence to companies, for example.

“Companies, for example, believe this is a stable environment. This has been the case all along, but it brings a sense of security and can encourage investments in the region,” Jarva says.

He believes the war will eventually end and ordinary people will again travel across the eastern border.

“NATO membership does not preclude the movement of ordinary people, after things are sorted out first,” Jarva hopes.

Source: Tanja Hannus, Yle Uutiset, 30 June 2022. Translated, from the Finnish, by the Russian Reader

“We Have to Cut the Strings”

“They built a wall!” The shore of the Vuoksi River in Imatra in more peaceful times. Archive photo by the Russian Reader

I love Imatra and Lappeenranta and South Karelia (Finland) more than any place on earth. Stupidly, perhaps, I regret that I wasn’t born there. Less stupidly, I am sad that I haven’t been there for two and a half years. BBC Newsnight went there this past week to talk with the locals about what they think about suddenly finding themselves across the border from a warring country and whether they think their heretofore proudly neutral Suomi should join NATO. Thanks to Riittaa Mustonen for the link.

Ironically, the reporter who did this story is named Sima. ||| TRR

If Finland joins Nato, its 1,300km border with Russia will become Nato’s eastern front. There is a troubled history of war between the two countries, but how do people living on this potential new frontier feel, and what’s been the impact of Putin’s aggression on previously close relationships between Finns and Russians who live here? In South Karelia, officials say the absence of Russian tourists crossing to Finland is costing the region €1m a day. Newsnight’s Sima Kotecha reports from the border town of Imatra and the region’s biggest city Lappeenranta where there are more than 2,000 Russian speakers.

__________

Viha Tekee Vihaa, or, The Finnish Class

Khadar Ahmed on the set. Photo courtesy of MTV3 Finland

“In NTV’s report you can by the way suddenly see a Finnish police car driving past, even though it’s about Sweden.”

That’s okay. The home audience just wants to hate on “Europe” and “Muslim terrorists” even if they have been edited, remixed, and totally fabricated out of thin air. The important thing in Putinlandia is to have something and someone to hate intensely all the livelong day.

And if you think this hatred is restricted to the “yobs” and other “uneducated” types, you’d be dead wrong. Over the last glorious seventeen years, I’ve been hearing this free-floating hatred spilling out in increasing quantities from the educated, from professionals, from the so-called intelligentsia.

In fact, I heard it again last night during my Finnish class (not the first time there, either). The remarks were “triggered” by the fact that I had had our group read a Helsingin Sanomat interview with the up-and-coming Somali-Finnish screenwriter and filmmaker Khadar Ahmed, who spoke with an utter lack of bittnerness (and in a totally fluent Finnish that none of us “Aryans” have yet achieved) about the total alienation and discrimination he had experienced as an immigrant to Finland. He’s now relocated to Paris.

My classmates were totally unimpressed that a road movie based on Ahmed’s screenplay, Saattokeikka, would be hitting screens in Finland in the coming days, or that a previous screenplay of his (Kaupunkilaisia) had been filmed by country’s hottest young filmmaker, Juho Kuosmanen, whose luminous and completely perfect film The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki won the top prize in the Un Certain Regard section at the 2016 Cannes festival and was submitted by Finland to the 89th Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film.

My classmates had never heard of Kuosmanen or the film, either, although Olli Mäki was screened right down the street from where we were sitting. That was a few months ago during the annual Finnish film festival, paid for by the Finnish government, who have been trying so hard to be besties with the “neighbor to the east,” which just wants to puff out its chest and hate on everybody as a matter of state policy and mundane practice.

We also read another Helsingin Sanomat piece, about the state of the Finnish nation and the state of “Finnishness,” in which well-known Finns were asked to respond to a set of ten questions that pollsters had posed as well to a larger sampling of ordinary Finns. One of the respondents was the Finnish rapper Prinssi Jusuf (aka Iyouseyas Bekele Belayneh), whose family moved from Ethiopia to Finland when Jusuf was two.

Yet my classmates were convinced, for some reason, that Prinssi Jusuf must rap in English, not Finnish, as if Finnish were too complicated for black people to learn.

One of my classmates was also on the verge of making a comment about who Prinssi Jusuf resembled. As an amateur psychic, I could imagine what she was about to say (Barack Obama, although they don’t look a thing alike), but a well-timed glare shut her up.

This is the lovely world that Putinism has built over the last seventeen years, although everyone answers for the garbage in their own heads, ultimately.

By the way, here’s a video of Prinssi Jusuf rapping in what sounds to me like perfectly fluent Finnish. ||TRR

Thanks to Robert Coalson for the heads-up on the Rinkeby story.

Tags: Border, Shopping

Tourists Forced to Leave Four Quintals of Finnish Food at Border

May 11, 2016, 2:25 pm / Tags: Border, Shopping

More than 410 kilograms of animal-derived produce were seized from travelers at the border between Finland and Leningrad Region from May 6 to May 9.

Russians brought pork, fish, sausage, cheese, butter, yoghurt, and cottage cheese back from Suomi, but not everyone stayed within the permitted limit of five kilograms per person. Passengers who exceeded the limit were also lacking Rosselkhoznadzor import permits and veterinary documents.

“Documents for the return of the goods to the Republic of Finland have been drawn up,” reported the press service of Rosselkhoznadzor’s Petersburg regional office.

Source: Fontanka.fi; translated by the Russian Reader