IMATRA: Finland’s border guard on Friday unveiled the first section of a 200-kilometre border fence with Russia being built after Moscow invaded Ukraine last year.

Finland joined Nato just a week ago and its 1,300-kilometre border has also doubled the frontier between the US-led military alliance and Russia.

Three metres tall and topped with barbed wire, it will cost over $400 million and is due to be completed by 2026.

Officials showed the construction site of the first three-kilometre section near the Imatra border crossing point, in south-eastern Finland.

Moscow says it is trying to take the western quarter of Bakhmut amid dispatch of fresh troops by Kyiv

“We started work on the site about a month ago. We have built a road and foundations,” Jaakko Makela from GRK, the construction company tasked with building the first phase, said.

About 70 percent of the fence will be erected on the southeast, with several smaller sections planned for central Finland and the largely uninhabited Arctic border in Lapland.

“Typical target areas will be border crossing points and their surrounding areas, roads leading across the border. Areas where human access is easy,” Brig Gen Jari Tolppanen told reporters.

“The necessity was triggered by a change in the security situation in Europe,” Tolppanen said. “There is a need to reduce dependence on the effectiveness of Russian border control.”

He said the fence was “the only effective and safe way to control large-scale entry”. Some six kilometres from the construction site, locals in the border town of Imatra have mixed feelings.

Fighting for Bakhmut

Russia said on Friday it was pushing to take the western districts of the frontline hotspot of Bakhmut, as sources said Ukraine was still sending in fresh troops.

Moscow has been trying to capture Bakhmut since last summer in what has become the longest and bloodiest battle of the Ukraine conflict.

On Friday, the Russian defence ministry said mercenaries from the Wagner paramilitary outfit were advancing further into the city, supported by Moscow’s air force.

“Wagner assault units are conducting high-intensity combat operations to conquer the western districts of the city,” it said in a statement.

Russian airborne troops were “providing support to assault squads and halting the enemy’s attempts to deliver ammunition to the city and bring in reserves”.

Shelling kills five

Russian shelling of a residential building in the eastern Ukrainian city of Sloviansk killed five people on Friday, the local governor said, warning that others could be buried in the rubble.

Sloviansk lies in part of the Donetsk region that is under Ukrainian control. It is close to territory controlled by Russia.

The top floor of the residential building, a typical Soviet-era apartment block, was blown off. Firefighters and rescuers worked to clear the debris.

Pages from children’s school books and drawings lay scattered among the debris on the street outside the building.

Published in Dawn, April 15th, 2023