Lappeenranta, FINLAND – Along Finland’s frontier with Russia, farmers are now the eyes and ears policing the border for trespassers.

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 heightened security concerns in Finland, which shares a 1,340-kilometre border – some fenced and some protected only by lakes and forest – with the former Soviet power. A few months later, Helsinki accused Moscow of using migrants as a pressure tactic and closed its eastern frontier, further ratcheting up tensions.

For a country of less than six million people, securing such a vast area is a serious challenge.

The few farms scattered among Karelia’s forests, and the families that run them, have since taken on a new strategic role that has drawn attention in Brussels. “They greatly contribute to the EU’s line of defence,” EU Agriculture Commissioner Christophe Hansen told the European Parliament in July 2025, after visiting Finland.

Framing farmers as security assets helps make the case for more cash for the industry in an area of Europe facing serious economic challenges – particularly as the next Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is expected to face cuts.

Eyes on the ground

Matti Ahvonen and his son Juuso run an arable farm on the outskirts of the village of Lappeenranta, and live so close to the border that a section of the recently built Finnish fence cuts right across their fields.

Since the invasion began, they have helped monitor the border. “When the war started, a couple of Russians came through to the Finnish side, fleeing the war,” Ahvonen recalls. “We called the Border Control, and they came to pick them up.”

Beyond the fence, once deserted forests stretch for kilometres. But that has changed. “There has been some military activity,” he says. Twice, soldiers came to the border, pitched a tent and stayed for a few nights before leaving, he says.

In Ahvonen’s opinion, their presence is meant as a form of psychological pressure. “They’re not really doing anything. They just want us to see them.”

A few kilometres north, another farmer, Kimmo Laamanen, talks about similar experiences. In summer 2024, he recognised Russians wandering near the border from their clothing style, particularly sling bags worn diagonally across the chest. “Nobody does that here.”

The men were walking along a usually empty road before stopping near a bridge, and later appeared at another nearby bridge. “I called a police officer I know, and I wasn’t the only one who had reported them,” Laamanen says.

Cost of a border

Those whom Karelian farmers now regard with caution were once their most important economic partners.

Before the border closure, the Ahvonens regularly crossed into Russia to buy cheaper fuel. They now have to rely on more expensive alternatives. That has imposed extra economic costs on those working at agricultural sites across the region, who are already struggling with depopulation and declining industry.

Some 20 kilometres further north, Kirsi Kostamo and Ilkka Romppanen’s business was also affected by the border closure, but in a different way.

They run a livestock farm with a few dozen suckler cows, relying on cheap Russian imports of limestone to improve their soil and peat for animal bedding. Losing access to these products has increased their costs by 30%. What’s more, finding electronic components has also become harder.

“Chips for calf ear tags or tractor parts are difficult to get because military demand is so high,” Romppanen explains.

But the biggest blow to the region has been the disappearance of Russian tourists, once a vital part of the economy.

Janne Hänninen runs an agro-tourism hotel near Hiukkajoki, just six kilometres from the border. Overlooking a lake, the building is decorated with stuffed fish on the walls.

Before the border closed, his most regular customers came from Russia.

“Russians loved staying here,” Hänninen says. “After greeting us, the first thing they would ask was when I would join them for an evening of shashlik [a grilled meat dish]. They wanted to hear about our lives, our children and our culture.”

Some even became friends. But then came the pandemic, followed by the war. “Since 2020, it’s been a totally different world,” Hänninen says.

Today, Finnish tourists keep his business going, but Hänninen says it is not the same. “They stay one night and move on,” he adds.

The loss of Russian tourism has hit an already struggling region hard. According to a 2025 OECD report, eastern Finland has experienced decades of deindustrialisation, illustrated by a major electronics manufacturing plant leaving the region in 2007. That’s contributed to a steady population decline.

Turning that trend around is hard. Bank loans are difficult to get, farmer Laamanen explains. He worries about the future. “Apart from the forest industry, Karelia is lacking almost all industry,” he says. Only farmers are staying, because “everyone who can do something else leaves”.

‘Sisu’ resistance

Yet, some choose to stay.

Kasimir Kokkonen helps his family run a pig and flower farm a few dozen kilometres from the border, while working as a smart agriculture specialist. He was the only one of his classmates to return home after studying in Helsinki, he explains, and now uses his expertise to help farmers tackle a new problem: GPS interference.

Russia has been repeatedly accused of jamming GPS signals across Europe as part of its electronic warfare campaign and attempts to counter Ukrainian drones.

Farmers like the Ahvonens have already seen their tractors’ GPS systems disrupted due to suspected Russian jamming. Last spring, Kokkonen installed a GPS station at home and developed an open-source steering system for tractors that have solved the issue. He is now helping other farmers do the same.

His story reflects the Finnish concept of “sisu”: resilience in adversity. It is rooted in the memory of the 1939 Winter War, when Finland fought the Soviet Union, lost around 10% of its territory and saw thousands of families displaced.

Karelian farmers still carry those scars: the Ahvonens lost 80% of their family land, while Kokkonen’s grandfather was wounded in the fighting. “Ukraine is fighting their Winter War,” says Pekka Kokkonen, Kasimir’s father. “That’s why Finnish people feel so connected to Ukraine.”

Eija Komulainen also carries memories of war. She runs a dairy farm on the outskirts of Kuhmo, about 100 kilometres north of the Kokkonens’ farm, in a region that witnessed one of the major battles of the conflict. Her home was one of the last in the area that escaped being burned as Finnish civilians evacuated at the end of the war.

“When I was a child, I played at being in the trenches,” she recalls.

Today, she wonders what would happen to her animals in another crisis. “You can’t put cows on the road when they have spent their whole lives inside.”

In Brussels

To help secure the border, locals are also drawing on EU funds.

In Kuhmo, for example, an initiative supported through the CAP helps residents prepare for power, communication, and water outages, while developing evacuation strategies. But even if they have the resilience to make it through a crisis, the spectre of land abandonment is considered the most insidious enemy.

The key challenge is making sure there are people maintaining a presence on the border, with the services needed to keep them there.

In February, the European Commission unveiled a plan to ease lending access for countries bordering Russia.

Listening to Laamanen, this cannot wait years, as communities are already hollowing out.

In the villages around his home, “only two or three homes are still inhabited, and the remaining residents are elderly people in their eighties,” Laamanen says. “When they die, there may be no one left.”

(adm, jp, aw)