Finnish Customs plans to auction off about 100 bicycles that were left by asylum seekers near the Vaalimaa eastern border crossing.
The auction is scheduled to be held on Thursday 16 May, at the Rajamarket shopping centre in Vaalimaa. The auction begins at 10am.
Around 100 bicycles in varying condition will be auctioned off, with proceeds going to the Finnish state. Some of the them are nearly new while others are in worse shape. More bike auctions are planned in the spring and summer.
At the end of last summer, undocumented asylum seekers from third countries began crossing the Russian border into Finland in increasing numbers. By November, nearly all of the hundreds of asylum applicants were arriving at crossings by bike and leaving them as they entered Finland, due to a ban on crossing the border by bicycle.
Finnish leaders, officials and experts have repeatedly accused Russia of organising the migrants' arrivals, characterising the phenomenon as a hybrid operation aimed at destabilising Finland over its Nato membership and support for Ukraine.
In an effort to curb the arrivals, Finland temporarily shut down all of its eastern border crossings a number of times, then announced last month that they would remain closed until further notice.
According to the Finnish government, more than 1,300 third-country nationals had arrived from Russia without visas since last August.
News of the bike auction was first reported by regional paper Kymen Sanomat.