Has about thirty kilometers from Russia, the Finnish city of Lappenranta cut off all its official contacts with its neighbors and suspended all cooperation projects funded by the European Union.
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Soldiers, police, border guards, but also doctors, teachers and municipal employees: since March 7, all are on the warfare in South Karelia, this eastern region of Finland, neighboring the Russia. From sabotage of the electricity network to the massive arrival of refugees, passing through a misinformation campaign, many scenarios have been imagined. A few weeks ago, the war seemed far away. Since February 24 and the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, it is in all heads.
This is only a long-standing local defense exercise, “as we do often,” says Ari-Pekka Meuronen. This reserve officer log coming soon 60 years is the head of the security of Lappeenranta, a city of 73,000 inhabitants, located about thirty kilometers from the Russian border, 200 kilometers from St. Petersburg and as many Helsinki. “We are not afraid, he assures. But we are preparing for everything, as we have never stopped doing it in Finland,” he recalls, shares 1 340 kilometers from border with Russia.
In his office, on the fourth floor of the Town Hall of Lappeenranta, the Mayor, Kimmo Jarva, returned from vacation. He was in Spain with his family when the war broke out in Ukraine. His last contact with Russia dates back to February 20th: the International Affairs Manager in St. Petersburg had sent him a message to congratulate him after the victory of Finnish hockey against the Russians at the Olympic Games. Since then, it is the radio silence.
Fear of the rise of an antirusian feeling
In a few hours, on February 24, Lappeenranta cut off all official communications with the other side of the border. All cooperation projects have been “suspended”, details Satu Sikanen, governor of South Karelia. Its region and that of St. Petersburg collaborated as part of a cross-border European program, focusing on infrastructure, the local economy, education and cultural exchanges, with € 77.5 million over six years. M me Sikanen now awaits the Brussels instructions to know that making money.
Closed temporarily during the pandemic, the office of representation of the city of Lappeenranta in St. Petersburg has definitively closed. Päivi Pietiläinen, who worked there ten years before returning to Finland in March 2020, fright, even if she supports the decision: “I think of all this work we did for decades, thrown out the window, because of This foolish war. “For two weeks, she” cries on the phone “with his Russian friends and his former colleagues.
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