Russia freezes bank accounts of Finland’s diplomatic missions, prompting cash payments

HELSINKI (AP) — Russia has frozen the bank accounts of Finland’s diplomatic representations in Moscow and St. Petersburg, disrupting money flow and forcing the Nordic country’s missions to resort to cash payments, the Finnish foreign minister said Wednesday.

Pekka Haavisto said Moscow’s move at the end of April breached the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations and Helsinki had delivered a diplomatic note on the matter to Russia.

“We’re not alone with the money traffic problem,” Haavisto told reporters during a news conference. “Also, some other European Union nations have encountered problems with money traffic in Russia. But according to our information, restrictions on Finland are among the tightest.”

He said Moscow’s measure affected, among other things, payment of rents, electricity and water bills by the Finnish Embassy in Moscow and the Consulate General in St. Petersburg, which now have to rely on their cash assets.

The move did not, however, affect salary payments to staff and there was no risk of closure of Finland’s diplomatic missions in Russia, Haavisto said.

Earlier this year, Finland temporarily closed its diplomatic missions in the Russian Arctic city of Murmansk and the city of Petrozavodsk in the Karelia region — neither of them far from the Finnish border.

Haavisto — the caretaker foreign minister, as Finland is in the process of forming a new government — stressed that current EU sanctions on Moscow weren’t directed at Russia’s embassies and consulates and Helsinki hadn’t frozen the bank accounts of Russia’s diplomatic missions in Finland.

Moscow seemed to interpret the issue differently. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said later Wednesday the measure was a response to similar steps allegedly taken by Helsinki.

“We confirm the fact of introduction of restrictions on use of accounts of the embassy of Finland and the Finnish consulate general in St. Petersburg,” Zakharova said, as quoted by Russian news agency Tass. “These actions are a reciprocal response to similar restrictions (by Finland), imposed on Russian missions in this country, which can only use an account in a single Finnish bank. It is a fact.”

Finnish President Sauli Niinistö said Russia was overreacting.

“Russia claims that this is a reciprocal measure. However, this (freezing of bank accounts) significantly exceeds the restrictions that have been the practice in Finland in limiting the money flow of the Russian embassy in Helsinki,” Niinistö told Finnish news agency STT.

Haavisto didn’t see the move as linked to Finland’s recent membership of NATO but rather to Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine.

Finland joined NATO last month as the 31st member of the alliance, a historic move after decades of military nonalignment. Finland shares a 1,340 kilometer (830-mile) border with Russia, the longest of any EU member.

Jari Tanner, The Associated Press