Finnish authorities are chopping down trees along the country's snowy Russian border, making way for a 124-mile-long fence, 10-feet high and topped with barbed wire, which the government has started installing, saying it "cannot rely" on Moscow to maintain border security.
The construction is part of a colossal effort by Finland and four other nations to fence off the European Union from Russia and its ally Belarus, which has accelerated since the invasion of Ukraine a year ago.
In all, more than 774 miles of fencing is being built or planned by Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, according to a tally of announcements and construction updates by EU countries since the war began.
The prospect of a physical border dividing the European continent is evocative of the Iron Curtain, the 4,300-mile-long collection of barriers, including the Berlin Wall, that divided the communist East and capitalist West during the Cold War.
The new fencing could be seen as a "barbed-wire curtain," said Klaus Dodds, a professor of geopolitics at Royal Holloway, University of London.
Each of the five EU countries has cited concerns that foreign governments -- identified by some as Russia and Belarus -- are permitting immigrants to illegally cross their borders or could do so in the future.
Many of the fencing plans were unveiled after Belarus retaliated against EU sanctions in 2021 by inviting immigrants to fly in and then pushing them to cross illegally into neighboring countries.
The construction efforts have accelerated since Russia's invasion over fears Russia, too, could seek to use illegal border crossings to destabilize the EU, which has welcomed millions of Ukrainian refugees.
"In the assessment of the Finnish Border Guard, the changed security environment has made it necessary to construct a barrier fence along part of the eastern border," Ismo Kurki, project manager for the eastern border barrier fence, said in an interview Wednesday. The fencing was first announced in September.
Finland shares an 832-mile border with Russia, the largest of any EU country, but the government has said that it was "not a sensible option" to build fencing along the entire expanse.
Finnish border officials said they hoped that by the time the $404 million barrier is completed in 2026, it will span 15 percent of the border with Russia -- concentrated primarily in southeast areas around existing crossing points.
The barrier is intended to prevent large numbers of migrants from trying to cross the border illegally from Russia in a short space of time, including in situations where crossings might be encouraged by foreign authorities, Finnish officials said.
In September, Finland announced restrictions on Russian nationals entering the country after the Kremlin announced a "partial military mobilization," although Kurki said that current traffic levels at Finnish-Russian border crossings were low.
"A physical barrier fence is essential in situations of widespread immigration, where it serves to slow down and guide the movements of any crowds that form," Finland's border guard said on its website. "Even if people skirt the fence, it still fulfills its task by slowing down illegal entry and helping the authorities to manage the situation."
In addition to the fence, authorities are installing an adjacent road for patrol vehicles and a camera surveillance system.
In 2021, Poland and the three Baltic states -- Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia -- issued a joint statement accusing Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko of deliberately sending migrants across the EU's eastern border as part of a "hybrid war" in retaliation against the bloc's punitive sanctions targeting his regime.
At the time, more than a dozen migrants told The Washington Post that Belarusian border guards had helped them though the border fence and into Poland. They described Belarusian forces pulling down or cutting through barbed wire and shuttling migrants all along the 250-mile border -- now heavily guarded and fortified by Poland -- to find the best places to cross.
In 2021, Latvia announced it was building a 315-mile fence along the Belarusian border. Lithuania began construction of its own 310-mile fence also with Belarus, and Estonia accelerated plans to build 71 miles of fencing along its Russian border -- originally announced three years earlier.
In November, Poland announced plans to build eight-foot-high, razor-wire fencing along its border with the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad to prevent future illegal crossings.
Last week, Polish Deputy Prime Minister Mariusz Blaszczak shared images of some of the fortifications that had been installed.
"In 1989, the Berlin Wall was dismantled, and this paved the way for an aspiration that Europe could think of its borders as friction-free," Dodds, the geopolitics professor said. Now, 30 years later, he said, hard borders are reemerging -- this time against a bellicose Russia and its ally Belarus.
"Barbed-wire fencing, drones and surveillance cameras are being put to work," he said. "Europe is fortifying."
Information for this article was contributed by Loveday Morris of The Washington Post.