Colonel Matti Pitkäniitty has been working for the Finnish border guard for a quarter of a century, but he has never experienced anything quite like the rapidly escalating events of the last fortnight.
There are similarities, certainly, with the migration crisis of 2015 and 2016, when about 1,700 people traversed Finland’s remote northern border crossings. But, for the head of the border guard’s international affairs unit, the tensions that have heightened in recent weeks between Helsinki and Moscow have resulted in a situation that is unique.
