MOSCOW, April 16. /TASS/. Relations between Moscow and Helsinki are practically non-existent as Finland has fenced off from Russia with an iron curtain, Russian Ambassador to Finland Pavel Kuznetsov told TASS.
"Russian-Finnish relations are in an extremely deplorable state. I’d rather say that there are actually no relations at all. Over the past four years, Finnish authorities have destroyed practically everything that had been built by our countries in the post-war decades in the political, trade, economic, scientific, research, cultural, and other spheres. All ties are severed, the border is closed, there is no passenger traffic," he said.
Finland "has dropped an iron curtain, both literally and figuratively," he noted. "This has never happened in the history of Russian-Finnish relations, not even in the 1920s and 1930s, on the eve of World War II."
"Today, there are only diplomatic ties through embassies and foreign ministries, and some working contacts between certain agencies on specific practical issues, such as the functioning of the border, the remaining freight railway service, etc.," the diplomat added.
According to Kuznetsov, the current "abnormal situation" in bilateral relations "does not meet the interests of the Finnish people, first and foremost." "Suffice to look at key figures characterizing the current state of and prospect for the country’s socio-economic development. Let alone, the Finnish state’s national security, which has degraded following Finland’s accession to NATO and its leadership’s confrontational stance towards Russia," he added.