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Fewer Russians visit Finland

Border to Finland.

The number of visas issued by the Finnish Consulate General in St.Petersburg has dropped to the same level as in 2011. Only in the first half of December the demand for visas fell 40 percent.

Location

At the same time, Finns are queueing up to five hours to get in to Russia for cheap goods at the Imatra border-crossing point in the south of the country.

The Consulate General in St.Petersburg has since the beginning of 2014 issued 900,000 visas, Severpost wirites, citing Fontanka. This is almost the same amount as in 2011. Last year the consulate issued more than 1,25 million visas.

On the Finnish-Russian border-crossing points in the North, Salla and Lotta, traffic is down 11.4 percent compared to last year, B-Port reports. This is somewhat less than on the border to Norway at Storskog border-crossing point, where the downfall is as much as 18 percent, as reported by BarentsObserver.

At the same time, the rapidly weakening ruble has made trips to Russia lucrative for Finns. At the Imatra boder-crossing point in Southeast Finland, people have been waiting up to five hours to get across the border in to Russia, Yle writes. Clothes, shoes, electronics and cosmetics are some of the commodities Finns go to Russia to buy right now.