HS on the eastern border | Denis from St. Petersburg’s weekly vacation trips to Finland are threatening to come to an end: HS followed the closing of the eastern border to Russian cars

Meast this is like this!

There was a man at the customs of Nuijamaa late on Friday evening, who was given a nasty surprise by Finland’s ban on cars with Russian license plates.

On the way home to St. Petersburg Denis looked pissed about his border traffic insurance.

The insurance he bought a week ago was supposed to take effect on September 27, but it turned out to be a wasted investment even before it took effect.

“I bought the insurance here from the customs of Nuijamaa, and I paid 360 euros for it. Then I was assured that no entry ban was coming. And now it happened like this, and they won’t even agree to return the money to me”, Denis said, exhausted.

On the night between Friday and Saturday, the entry ban for cars registered in Russia entered into force, from which the foreign minister Elina Valtonen (kok) told on Friday.

Finland thus began to follow the guidelines given by the EU Commission.

However, the ban on the entry of Russian cars does not apply to cars owned by EU citizens or their family members, cars of diplomats or Russian cars entering the country for humanitarian reasons.

His wife Loran and his daughter Daria Denis, who was on the move with me, no longer has anything to do with his car to Finland. The family did not want to tell HS their last name.

The family said that they went to Finland for vacation every week. Tourist trips to Finland by Russians have been banned for about a year already, but the ban has not been a problem for a family that has a Moldovan passport in addition to a Russian passport.

On the other hand, the ban on the entry of Russian cars into the country is a problem, unless they use some trick, for example, to use a car registered in Moldova.

“What’s the point of Finland banning our entry just because of Russian license plates? We have benefited Finland and spent 2,000–3,000 euros on each trip. Besides, property confiscated due to sanctions has also been returned to the oligarchs, but not even 360 euros will be returned to me,” snapped Denis.

In his opinion, the travel bans imposed on the citizens of some countries will not help to end the war.

“My wife’s mother is in Italy and my sister is in France, and my mother is in Moldova. In any case, people are all over the world.”

Denis did not want to take a stand on the Russian war of aggression.

“I don’t understand war at all. My father is Ukrainian and my mother is Russian, and this is completely incomprehensible.”

Some the Russians seemed to be still poorly informed about the car import ban that was just coming into force.

“Is it really the case that cars with Russian license plates will be banned from entering the country”, one St. Petersburg man came to ask the reporter.

It turned out that, in addition to the Russian passport, he also had a Moldovan passport, with which the trips to Finland had been successful until now.

The man was left wondering if he could somehow get his car registered in the Finnish registry without Finnish citizenship in order to continue traveling.

Vyborg Igor Zaika was going to this information for the last time in his car from his work trip home from Finland. He said that he had already been a courier in traffic between Finland and Russia for 20 years.

“At most I delivered mail every day. No one knows how I can do my job from now on. I understand the purpose of the sanctions, but what does denying my car entry help? Preventing human movement does not end war.”

Zaika also pointed out that the sanctions are not equal.

“No one forbids Finns from driving their cars to Russia.”

To Finland Those who moved from Petrozavodsk as Ingrian returnees a long time ago Arkady Sokolov and Tanja Sokolova and their 8-year-old Katri-daughters came back home to Lappeenranta from Russia on Friday evening.

“We now have to visit Russia more often, because friends and acquaintances in Vyborg and St. Petersburg find it even harder to get to Finland due to the ban on Russian cars,” they said.

Already in the past, banning tourist trips from Russians has greatly reduced the travel of acquaintances to Finland.

The family is sorry that the border has closed. They consider the new sanctions downright historic.

“It would have been good if the window to Europe was open for the Russians.”

They did not want to take a stand on the causes of the war and sanctions.

“War is always a bad thing. We don’t understand the reasons for the war, and therefore it’s not worth saying anything that you might have to apologize for someday,” said Arkadi Sokolov.

Natalia Malkova and Mikhail Malkov came at the last minute on Friday from St. Petersburg to Nuijamaa to meet their son, who is studying in Finland for the second year.

“We don’t know how we will be able to meet him in the future. Maybe we could buy him a car in Finland with Finnish registers, which we could drive ourselves”, they thought.

Natalija Malkova said she was shocked by the war and understood that the sanctions were justified.

“In Russia, however, we cannot talk like that. We are not allowed to express our opinion or go to a demonstration because we can be arrested and imprisoned. Those in power are more powerful than us.”

The couple said they hope that the boy, who had a good time in Finland, will stay in the country and not return to Russia. They themselves have thought about the possibility of moving to Finland, which, according to them, is technologically and economically ahead of Russia.

Vyborg To Andrei On Friday, the man who introduced himself was going home from a kind of business trip at the border station in Nuijamaa.

“This is not a decent job, but I at least earn something. Because of the sanctions, there were fewer jobs in Vyborg, and that’s why I pick up some stuff from Finland about once a week and sell it in Vyborg,” Andrei said.

He didn’t want to give his last name either.

Andrei does not know how his teenage trips will turn out in the future. One possibility could be to switch to using shuttle buses instead of cars, the number of which may increase due to the ban on Russian cars. For example, the bus company Ecolines said on Friday that it will start operating again between St. Petersburg and Lappeenranta.

Andrei said he was disappointed by the ban on Russian cars.

“I expected the Finns to be more benevolent.”

However, he said he understood the purpose of the sanctions and that he was firm and the president Vladimir Putin that against the war.

“I dare to say it out loud. Most Russians don’t dare to talk about it in public at all or only talk about it to trusted people.”

The war has come to Andrei, who is from Sevastopol, in the Russian-occupied Crimea. His mother and sister still live in Sevastopol, which has been attacked by Ukraine.

“The big airstrike on the city’s shipyard a couple of days ago happened only about a kilometer from their home,” Andrei said.

In Andrei’s opinion, the West does not support Ukraine enough.

“The end of the war depends on the number of weapons. Why does the West give Ukraine so few weapons? If the West really supported Ukraine, it would give more arms aid.”

Russian cars the entry ban caused concern and irritation, but not the last-minute rush of Russian cars to the borders. The Friday evening at the Nuijamaa border station was calm as usual in terms of traffic.

Only the passengers from the Ryanair Italy flight that landed at Lappeenranta airport caused, as usual, a line of a few dozen cars to the border check.

The air cooled, the fog slowly began to lift into the darkness of autumn, and Friday turned into Saturday.

Yet another new sanction caused by Russia’s war of aggression had come into effect.