Salla, northeast of Rovaniemi, and Raja-Joosepin near Ivalo are the European Union’s only two street connections to Russia within the Arctic Circle. Just before the pandemic, website traffic had steadily elevated yr following calendar year due to the fact the late 1980ties, largely pushed by cross-border browsing and leisure vacation by people today from the Murmansk region.

The total targeted traffic on the northeastern border lowered by a complete of about 84% in contrast to 2020 and by 97% in comparison to 2019, according to the Finnish Border Guards’ stats for 2021.

Journey limitations were introduced up north in early March 2020 when Governor of Murmansk, Andrey Chibis, urged the region’s inhabitants to refrain from touring to neighboring countries, that staying Finland and Norway. It was in late January 2020 that the very first COVID-19 infected individual was hospitalized and isolated in Lapland. 

A handful of months afterwards, the two Finland and Norway pressed the alarm bell and launched lockdown. Considering the fact that then, really couple of folks have crossed the border. Primarily truck motorists and a few other organization-associated travels, or officers from the two countries. Browsing and leisure journey, as well as transit journey from northern Russia through the airports of Ivalo and Rovaniemi, are approximately non-existing.

4,327 folks crossed more than Salla, while 2,736 people today had been counted at the Raja-Joosepin checkpoint previous yr.

Peak-yr for border crossings involving Russia’s Kola Peninsula and northern Finland was 2013 when a whole of 386,942 persons traveled at the two checkpoints. That was 54 situations extra border crossings than in 2021. With Moscow’s unlawful annexation of Crimea and the war in eastern Ukraine from 2014, cross-border traffic declined steadily 12 months by yr until finally 2019 when a whole of 201,057 border crossings had been counted at Salla and Raja-Joosepin.

Travel involving the two nations around the world in the north was down 97% final calendar year in contrast with 2019.

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