Jyväskylä's Keskisuomalainen is among the papers reporting that Minister of the Interior Krista Mikkonen (Green) told parliament on Thursday that Finnish authorities have a good idea of who is arriving by train from Russia.
The statement was in response to a question from an opposition Finns Party MP who expressed concern that there could be people among the hundreds of Russians arriving in Finland by train every day whose motivation is to extend Russian government influence.
Mikkonen assured parliament that the Allegro train service between St. Petersburg and Helsinki cannot be accessed without proper documentation.
"We know who's coming from there," Mikkonen said.
Mikkonen also pointed out that the majority of passengers arriving by train are continuing their journeys via Helsinki-Vantaa Airport to other countries.
Mikkonen added that the number of passengers on the Allegro train service has decreased this week, that Russian visa applications are currently at a very low level compared to normal, and that overall traffic crossing the eastern border has fallen to about a tenth of what it was before the coronavirus pandemic.
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Inflation hitting hard
Helsingin Sanomat points out that with prices for goods such as coffee, petrol and food rising, no one will escape the effects of inflation.
Experts estimate that in March, prices will rise by more than five percent year-on-year. Ilkka Lehtinen, a retired expert formerly with Statistics Finland, told the paper that he estimates the inflation rate in March will be about 5.4 percent.
These exceptionally high price rises will hit different households with varying degrees of intensity.
In the current situation, writes HS, someone who operates a car, living in a detached house and heating their home with electricity or oil will be the hardest hit. The costs of repairs for single-family homes, the price of petrol and diesel, and the price of electricity have risen so much that the rate of inflation for these household could rise to as much as ten percent in March.
Least affected by price increases is likely to be someone currently renting, and who uses mainly public transport to get around.
Back to nature
The European Commission is expected to soon be presenting a proposal for legally binding EU nature restoration targets. The aim is to restore the EU’s ecosystems to help increase biodiversity, mitigate and adapt to climate change, and prevent and reduce the impacts of natural disasters.
The Commission's proposal has not yet been published, but a draft version has been leaked.
Janne Kotiaho, chair of the Finnish Nature Panel and Professor of Ecology at the University of Jyväskylä, told Iltalehti that he has seen the draft and in its current form, it could impact more than 12 million hectares, or a third of the whole of Finland.
Kotiaho estimates that the directive may obligate the Finnish state to restore 1–2 million hectares of the environment by 2030.
"In order to understand what a million hectares means, we have restored some tens of thousands of hectares in Finland during the past 20–30 years. Now in less than 10 years more than a million hectares should be restored. That provides some idea of the scale," Kotiaho says.
In Finland, restoration of degraded lands means, for example, restoring drained bogs to their natural state. Half of Finland's wetlands have been drained.
Ukrainian schoolchildren
The first children who fled the war in Ukraine have started their schooling in Helsinki's primary schools, reports the local Helsinki paper Helsingin Uutiset.
Outi Salo, the director of basic education for the city, told the paper that by mid-week about 20 Ukrainian children had started lessons in Helsinki's schools.
Children aged 7-8 are being placed the local schools closest to their accommodation where they are getting group instruction to prepare them to join their Finnish peers.
Older schoolchildren are going into classes, available in several city schools, intended for children who move to Finland from another country and are not proficient in the Finnish language. Children in these groups usually spend about a year getting ready to move on to regular classes.
Salo said that sufficient facilities and teachers for the Ukrainian children will be found for the rest of the academic year. They will also have access to full student care services in the schools.