THE WINNER A crowd disembarked from a local train at the Viipur railway station on Thursday, but there were no people who appeared to be migrants.
The people we talked to in the Viipur market hall hadn’t seen migrants in the city either. One trader updated that migrants appear at the border as if falling from the sky.
The opening of the Finnish border had already aroused hope. The sellers presented the new Finnish products they received that day, such as Fazer’s newest chocolates.
People still crossing the border carry goods with them to many stalls. The shop had, among other things, Finnish, Swedish and Estonian coffee and tea brands, sweets and detergents.
The information about the new border closure spread quickly in the hall on Thursday afternoon. One of the sellers was reading the news on his cell phone and the others were listening.
– It’s our fault, one of the people we talked to in the shopping hall snapped. According to him, someone made a business by delivering migrants to the border, and because of that the Finns would now close the border again.
He pointed out that there are three checkpoints of the border guard before the border, and even locals can’t pass through them – so how was it possible that migrants got to the border without proper documents? He said that the migrants will be transported to the first checkpoint, where they will be given bicycles. He urged to go and see, you could get there without checking the documents.
At this point, our film crew was overcome by a little speed blindness. During the past month, we had been looking for emigrants aspiring to Finland along the Leningrad and Murmansk regions without much success.
We left Vyborg to drive towards Torfjanovka border station, which is the Russian counterpart of Finland’s Vaalimaa border station.
The border zone starts soon after Vyborg, but the first guard on the edge of Vyborg just waved our car forward. The evening grew dark quickly.
There were interesting stories about border business. We heard about a driver who had been offered a gig transporting migrants at the time the border was closed.
These had arrived from Murmansk to St. Petersburg. The driver had been offered a handsome sum of 800 dollars to take the travelers to the first border barrier on the Saimaa Canal – that is, in the direction of the Brušnitsnojen-Nuijamaa border crossing. This had happened about a week ago, i.e. already before the opening of the border. When the driver wondered how the migrants would get across the closed border, he was told it was none of his business.
An arresting sight at the checkpoint
Our intention was to monitor the situation at the checkpoint from further away, but after a long drive, the checkpoint came unexpectedly. We didn’t have time to turn around.
Suddenly we witnessed a special situation: the back door of the car was open and a man was handing out bicycles to the migrants. There was a group of about four or five men. Bicycles were distributed right in front of the border guard checkpoint.
At the same time, the border guard on duty at the checkpoint walked up to our car. We tried to say that we were thinking of refueling at the Lukoil gas station that was visible on the other side of the checkpoint.
It didn’t happen, we were directed to the side of the road next to a checkpoint.
We were recognized right away – one of the border guards who came to the place stated that these were the ones who adventured here already the last time, when the border was closed. The border guards took our passports and other documents and told us to wait.
This was not a good turn. The Border Guard is an institution under the security service FSB. We had already been warned once about moving in the border zone.
The men cycling by and riding their bikes happily waved at us. We didn’t get to talk to them this time either.
A pile of Syrian passports
After about two hours of waiting, I was called to a small guardhouse. A protocol would be written there.
A uniformed border guard announced that I had violated the law on the border zone by moving in the area without a special permit. That would be a fine. He laughed that it was nothing compared to the fines in Finland.
It took a long time to write the minutes. At the same time, there was a little commotion in the guardhouse, and an official was busy in the booth, settling the number of visitors and passing on information on the phone.
One officer in civilian clothes was sorting the passports of the latest arrivals on the table. Most were from Syria, it sounded like there was at least one Yemeni passport.
The plainclothes officer explained that the Russian authorities do not have the right to stop those aspiring to Finland if their documents are in order on behalf of Russia.
Only people whose travel documents in Russia are not in order are turned away from the border and directed to the police.
One such man was brought to the checkpoint, and the border guard who interrogated me took his case into consideration.
I got a cup of coffee in my hand and felt a stab in my heart towards my colleagues waiting in the car. We talked to the clerk from Dostoyevsky and the sights of Vyborg.
Finally, the documents were ready to be signed. The fine was 500 rubles, about 5 euros. In the end, the worst punishment was the long uncertain wait: in total, the situation lasted about three and a half hours.
Too small bikes
During that time, 30–40 cyclists passed through the checkpoint towards the Finnish border. Most were men, but there was at least one woman among them.
Many of the riders cycled in a very uncertain mood. This may have been partly due to the fact that many of the bikes were far too small for an adult.
One passenger had a large bag tied to the bike rack, which did not make driving on the snowy and slippery road any easier.
From the checkpoint, it was still about six kilometers to the border. The goers slowly disappeared behind the bend in the road into the darkness.
We also saw a car returning from the direction of the border station with bicycles on it.
It could be that the bikes abandoned by the migrants were collected in the zone between the border posts and further delivered to the new arrivals. For someone, this had to be good business too.