I'm not surprised that my more active account on a big server doesn't see spam, because it has good admin. It is a bit curious that I haven't seen any here, either. I guess it's all very Mastodon-specific.
I believe I figured out how to import old posts into this account without causing it to flood the fediverse with them. They're now in my local profile and should be browsable by other servers - as well as indexed by them, if they ever see those posts eg due to a boost by someone.
Sadly, as part of this process I (half-accidentally) lost all the previous followers.
But what of the motivations? I think there are two.
The first, obvious from the Western point of view is to manufacture instability at the border and foment disagreement among both the Finnish as well as European policy base. This intent has largely failed.
The second, which I think was always more likely, was to create a situation where the kremlin could get its Western border closed without having to appear as the party who closed it. This plays out to two objectives for putin: first, to reduce transitory traffic through russia, since there's no destination to go to, and second, to prevent russians themselves from fleeing the country as he is implementing more severe domestic policies.
In this second motivation, we played to putin's hand by implementing an absolute closure so he wouldn't need to. 12/13
Coming back to today. Are we still looking at the same playbook? I think we mostly are. The russian actions have seemed more deliberate, with what looks like more intent to bus people to the border. They're still tightly controlled, in that no reports have been seen of anyone trying to transit via the forest. Several hundred kilometers of guarded border fence have been built on the Finnish side since the last time, but it does not cover the entirety of the 1380 km border, so if russians wanted to, they could still organize migrant traffic outside of the controlled stations. That would be against their own control interests, however. 11/13
As a second major difference, the way belarus organized this was to transit the migrants to any points along the border with instructions to cross where-ever they could. In contrast, the traffic from russia to both Norway and to Finland had been to controlled border stations, not to the hundreds of kilometers of forested border region. Why this difference? My guess is that putin has no desire to have these people camp out in the russian border zone where its difficult for the FSB to keep an eye on them. 10/13
Fast forward to 2021. lukashenko had "won" the wildly corrupt belarusian presidential election, intensifying the pro-democracy protests and leading to severe worsening of the EU-belarus relations.
As the first difference to the earlier Arctic events, lukashenko took initiative to manufacture an influx of migrants on the Lithuanian and Polish borders by organizing flights from the countries most impacted by the Syrian refugee crisis to Minks, then busing these people to the EU border. 9/13
Nevertheless, during early 2016 negotiations between Finnish and russian officials, culminating in a meeting between Finnish President Niinisto and the russichst dictator putin resulted in a new agreement by which russia would resume their control over transit to the Finnish border and the influx subsided. As part of this agreement, the northernmost border stations were closed for six months and only Finnish, russian or belarusian citizens would be allowed transit. 8/13
Until this crisis, the border to russia had been a fairly quiet place of commercial transit and visits, largely because russia had been seen to control who were able to approach the border region. These controls were apparently loosened, and both local and federal russian authorities said to push migrants toward the border to Europe.
It should be said that the kremlin rarely appears to manufacture incidents like the 2015-2016 events out of whole cloth - rather, they are keen to latch on and amplify to scenarios which begin without their direct contribution. Whether the 2015 situation was of their manufacture or not, they certainly were contributing to the events. 7/13
While approximately 38 thousand people applied for asylum in Finland during the 2015-2016 crisis, it should be noted that less than 5% of them arrived via the Arctic route, with majority instead traveling through Sweden, but choosing to make their asylum application in Finland rather than in Sweden. 6/13
This led to an influx counted in the thousands towards the Norwegian border due to Norway's reputation as a safe and wealthy nation. Norway responded by closing their border, which then led to the same people, already in Murmansk, to try the Finnish border instead. As this was happening at a time when russia had already started its war against Ukraine by occupying Crimea, the geopolitical motivations were widely discussed. 5/13
https://ebrary.net/138241/sociology/informal_practices_rule_russia_migration_arctic_route_#586
No such deal would fully stem migration within such a large group of people, nor did everyone fleeing Syria go to Turkey, or all people migrating originate from Syria. A lot of traffic was coming across the Mediterranean from northern Africa, and many coming from Asian and Middle Eastern countries chose to try a route through russia. The Nordic countries had been advertised as good destinations and the in-land route as a safer alternative. 4/13
Obviously, receiving these people had been a burden to the bordering countries and many wanted the refugees out. Very few were received into EU nations, and EU further made a real with Turkey to pay for the camps there, rather than have Erdogan organize refugees transiting to the southern EU border by millions. 3/13
https://neighbourhood-enlargement.ec.europa.eu/enlargement-policy/turkiye/eu-support-refugees-turkiye_en
It's now been two weeks since Finland closed the majority of our russia border crossing points and a week since the last one of the border points closed. This situation is going to last for another week - this closure will end on the 14th, until new decisions extend it before that.
But what's the bigger picture here? Is this a repeat of the situation experienced on the belarusian border to Lithuania, Poland and Latvia in 2021? What of the last migration influx to Finland back in 2015-2016? 1/13
@osma Test reply from another account - one which I'll try to moderate away.
Tähän päättyy suomennokseni. Kuten alussa totesin, virheistä niin käännöksessä kuin paikallistamisessa vastaan minä ja korjaukset ovat tervetulleita. Vaikka säie saattaa vaikuttaa hieman vanhentuneelta esim Omikron viittauksineen, hengityssuojainten toimintaperiaate ei tässä välissä ole muuttunut mitenkään.
Thank you for @jonlevy for the original material I translated and localized for Finland above. Any errors made are mine.
32. Jos koulussa ei noudateta hyvää suojainkäytäntöä, #Omikron leviäminen tulee olemaan nopeaa ja lähikoulu päättyy äkkiä. Kirurgiset maskit eivät tule olemaan riittävä suoja nykyisllä ilmaantuvuustasoilla. Nyt on aika toimia, koska terveysturvallinen koulutus on perusoikeus.
31. Joka koulussa pitäisi olla #BetterMasks laadukkaita hengityssuojaimia saatavilla terveystasa-arvon toteutumiseksi. Näin suojaamme opettajia ja lapsia, turvaamme lähikoulua, mahdollistamme vanhempien työssä jatkamisen ja vähennämme #COVID19 määrää yhteiskunnassamme.
30. #BetterMasks laadukkaat hengityssuojat toimivat hyvin, ovat mukavia käyttää, eivät maksa paljon ja olennaisimmin, ovat nyt kipeästi tarpeen. Suojele itseäsi, läheisiäsi ja ryhmääsi lähikoulussa ja vaadi parempaa suojauspolitiikkaa.
29. Omassa perheessäni olemme tykänneet S-Ryhmän FFP2 Style nimellä myytävästä tuotteesta, mutta sen sopivuus 11-vuotiaan tytön kasvoille ei ollut riittävä. Itse löysimme yhden tuotteen Saksasta, FlameBrother FFP2 Kids. Tähän olisi hyvä nähdä Suomessa tarjontaa.
Suojainten kappalehinnat ovat varsin kohtuullisia, mutta on toki hankala ostaa kymmenien kappaleiden paketteja vain kokeiltavaksi. Opetuskäyttöön kannattaisi tarjota muutamaa eri vaihtoehtoa kokeiltavaksi.
28. On vaikea suositella mitään tiettyä suojainta, koska kasvojen muodon ja käyttöhetkien pituuden mukaan eri tuotteet sopivat toisia paremmin. Oikeastaan parasta olisi vain kokeilla useampaa.
27. Niin S-Ryhmä, K-Ryhmä, Tokmanni, Lidl kuin monet verkkokaupat myyvät FFP2-suojaimia hyllytavarana tai kotiin toimitettuna, edullisimmillaan 25 kpl paketteina kympillä. Monilla on lisäksi useampi vaihtoehto, mistä on hyötyä juuri sovituksen kannalta.
26. Mistä näitä parempia suojaimia sitten saa? Onneksi tilanne Suomessa on varsin hyvä. Tässä suuret kauppaketjumme ovat eduksi: niiden hankintaketjuihin voi luottaa ja saatavuutta on koko maassa.
25. Uudelleenkäytettävyyden vuoksi FFP2-suojaimen kustannukset ovat pienempiä kuin moni odottaisi.
10 suojaimen paketti riittää mainiosti kuukauden arkikäyttöön tai pidempäänkin, jopa monen tunnin päivittäisessä koulukäytössä.
24. FFP2-maski kestää kymmeniä tunteja käyttöä kunhan se ei kastu tai likaannu. Usein ensimmäisenä pilalle menevät suojaimen kuminauhat tai nenätiiviste, minkä johdosta sovitus kärsii.
https://www.jem-journal.com/article/S0736-4679(20)30369-3/fulltext