Since 2020, stories about the instrumentalized use of migrants have regularly appeared in the news. From Belarus pushing migrants towards Poland and Lithuania in 2021 to Finland closing its border with Russia in late 2023 after a sudden flow of third-country nationals, these episodes are often portrayed as a new hybrid tool used against Europe. However, our research shows that Russia’s first test run with migrants took place years earlier, high above the Arctic Circle. In 2015–16, Russia abruptly relaxed its own border controls and allowed more than 7,000 migrants to reach the three northernmost crossings into Norway and Finland. This was not simply a spontaneous by-product of the wider European migration crisis — as Russia argued at the time — but a pilot operation enabled and directed by the FSB with the approval of the Russian leadership.
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