Russia seems an odd place for migrants to cross into Europe. It's out of the way, actively invading Ukraine, and much of its borderland is hostile, snowy forest. But now that the southern and eastern routes into Europe are so dangerous, its implausibility is making it attractive.

To be clear, the route through Russia isn't new; it caused a clash between Brussels and Moscow back in 2015-16. But it's been so quiet of late that it wasn't even mentioned in Frontex's 2024 border crossing statistics. That seems to be changing. Some 900 people made the crossing last November alone, raising concerns in Helsinki and Brussels.

Predictably, European authorities have cried foul. Finnish officials have accused Russia of instrumentalising migration to retaliate against Finland for joining NATO in April 2023. And it is unlikely that they're entirely wrong. But their finger pointing hides their own complicity.

New migration routes open up when old ones become too dangerous. And deadly pushbacks, detention and deportation have certainly made the Balkans and Mediterranean dangerous for people on the move. This lack of better options is what is causing migrants and smugglers to set their sights on Moscow, and the freezing forest routes beyond it to Europe.

From Tunisia to Helsinki, via Moscow

"Everything else I tried before had failed" said Amir, a 34-year-old Tunisian man, phoning from a hostel in Helsinki a few weeks after crossing from Russia. "I didn't want to get here this way. But do you know how many times my visa applications got rejected without them giving me any reason why?"

Amir is from Kabaria, an impoverished neighbourhood on the edge of Tunisia's capital Tunis. After failing to get a travel visa, he said he next tried to find a European employer who would sell him a work contract. But when he realised that method put him at high risk of getting scammed, he turned to smugglers.

"I was in Turkey for more than a year trying to enter Europe from Greece and Bulgaria," he said. "But I got sent back at least 20 times." Amir's experience echoes that of thousands of people being illegally pushed back to Turkey by EU border police.

Frustrated, he returned to Tunisia, where a friend told him about a virtual travel agency run using Facebook, that was facilitating passage via northern routes. It was all anybody in Kabaria could talk about.

Amir logged on, and a broker called 'Sofien' said he could easily arrange a visa to Russia and then transit to the Finnish border.

The deal was simple. "The travel agency asked for €1,000 to take care of all the necessary documents to apply for the Russian visa," Amir said. This included the visa application form, a hotel reservation, and a return ticket from Tunis to Moscow. The fee for all the paperwork was €250, whilst an extra €750 secured an invitation letter from a Russian organisation, company or private person.

Once in Moscow, Amir met his smuggler. He said his name was Abu Kamel, and that he'd moved to Russia with his family after the US invasion of Iraq and never left. He told Amir that smuggling people to Finland was his main job.

"I was lucky," said Amir. "Abu Kamel is a trusted smuggler who works closely with the travel agencies. He has so many clients and is very well known for what he does."

The Finnish border

Arranging the next stage of his journey involved more costs for Amir, and he had to ask for help. "It took a while to get my family to send me the money I needed because of all the sanctions and banking restrictions in Russia," he said.

Abu Kamel charged Amir €700 for the journey from Moscow to the Finnish border. He was also told to bring another €1000 with him: €500 to bribe the Russian border guards, and another €500 in case they ended up needing an inflatable boat to cross the river.

"Once at the border there are three ways to cross," said Amir. "You either try the official border crossing and hope the border police will let you through, or you cross in an area that is not patrolled, either by bicycle or by crossing the river."

It wasn't always this way. Before many of the official border crossings to Finland were closed last year, people were allowed through directly to apply for asylum. They would reach the border by bike, often buying them from Russian border guards to be able to cross the snowy terrain.

"The bribes are needed to make sure the Russian border police don't arrest you, and the bikes to make sure you reach the border faster rather than walking through high snow," Amir said.

Finland closed all the crossing points along its 1,300 km-long border with Russia following the sharp increase of migrants late last year. The decision was extended to April 2024 last month. The Finnish government also announced that all asylum requests would be processed inside registration centres, and that a 200 km border wall would be constructed by 2026.

Amir said Abu Kamel took him and eight other people close to Raja-Jooseppi, the northern-most border crossing, and the last official crossing point to close in December 2023.

"He took us there because it's the least controlled part of the border and he has personal connections to the border guards," Amir said.

The group were given bikes to cycle towards the border. Once they reached the woods, they were told to leave the bikes on the main road and continue walking, following a map location shared by Abu Kamel.

"The walk was so horribly cold and difficult, we were walking in such high snow," said Amir. "But there was no pushback like on the Greek and Bulgarian borders. We were so relieved once we crossed into Finland."

In a video seen by openDemocracy, Amir is laughing with his companions as they slip on the snowy paths near the Finnish border.

Once in Finland, Abu Kamel's advice was to walk through the forest until the main road. From there they would have to fend for themselves, or spend another €300 each for a taxi to come and pick them up.

The group decided to walk. They arrived famished and freezing at the town of Saariselkä the next day.

From there they went their separate ways. One of the group, a Syrian man named Muhanned, went directly to the police station to ask for asylum in Finland. Amir waited in Saariselkä for a week, before finding transport to Helsinki, where he is currently waiting for a cousin living in Denmark to come and pick him up.

Russia's war on Europe, or Europe's war on migrants?

Finland and Europe have framed the rise of migrants arriving to the Russian-Finnish border as an attempt at hybrid warfare by Russia. Hans Laijtens, the executive director of Frontex, said last year that the EU must be ready for Russia to use migration to advance its own geopolitical interests.

There is no hard evidence of Russia actively facilitating irregular migration to Finland, but a growing number of testimonies and videos hints at some kind of engagement from the Russian authorities. It's unlikely the European accusations are baseless.

But it's equally unlikely that Putin is the sole or even main reason why migrants are now bicycling through the snow to Finland. Smugglers and migrants are adapting to circumstances by going north. The reason they are entering Russia in the first place is because European policy has made southern and eastern migration routes incredibly difficult and dangerous.

If Putin is weaponizing migration, then Europe, in a very real way, is channelling ammunition to him.

From openDemocracy