HELSINKI -- Migration from Russia to neighboring Finland was at record levels last year, higher than figures seen after the collapse of the Soviet Union over 30 years ago, the Finnish statistics agency said Wednesday.
Citing official 2022 immigration data, Statistics Finland said just over 6,000 people immigrated from Russia to the Nordic country of 5.5 million last year. Some 94% of those had Russian citizenship and the figure was almost equally divided between males and females.
When the Soviet Union was brought down at the end of 1991, some 5,500 people migrated from the fallen empire to Finland that year.
The number of migrants Finland received from Russia hovered between 1,700 and 2,600 annually in 1992-1995, the agency said, adding that the yearly figure remained below 3,100 until 2021.
Senior statistician Juhana Nordberg from Statistics Finland said there was a temporal connection between last year's migration figure and Russia's war in Ukraine, which started on Feb. 24, 2022.