Finnish police and the Border Guard suspect a scheme that turned paper employment into residence permits and citizenship, Yle reported. Investigators believe one man organized it through companies that did little or no business, and that it may have run for more than two decades. The suspected organizer and the people who obtained citizenship are Russian nationals.

Jobs that existed only in documents

Authorities suspect the main figure arranged fictitious employment relationships for foreign nationals. That paperwork let them apply for Finnish residence permits and, later, for citizenship. From 2003 he registered several companies in southeastern Finland, police and the Border Guard said. The firms either did no real business at all or very little of it. The suspected criminal arrangement appeared shortly after 2003.

Applicants are suspected of paying for the fictitious jobs and for help assembling their documents.

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At least 12 citizenships, five unfinished applications

At least 12 people obtained Finnish citizenship without grounds, by the investigation's account. Five more naturalizations were still unfinished when the preliminary investigation opened in 2024. Criminal police commissioner Teppo Tähtinen said the scale of the case came as a surprise to investigators. 

Investigators also believe the arrangement ran further back, with people naturalized earlier possibly involved. The statute of limitations has expired on those cases.

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The preliminary investigation found that the main suspect and his accomplices sat Finnish language exams for other people. They also completed study assignments in Finnish on their behalf. Without that, the applicants probably could not have obtained citizenship, the investigation found.

Naturalization normally requires five to eight years of residence on a residence permit, Finnish or Swedish at B1 level, and confirmed income, The Moscow Times reported. In 2025, 14,689 people received Finnish citizenship. Russians were among the nationalities filing the most applications, together with citizens of Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, and Somalia.

Finland's harder line toward Russia

Finland has kept its eastern border with Russia closed, and Helsinki has accused Moscow of steering migrants toward the crossings. The country has also rearmed since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, raising its reserve age and setting a long-term troop target. Last week Finnish authorities opened an inquiry into a suspected Russian airspace violation over the Gulf of Finland.

The number of Ukrainian citizens holding temporary protection status in EU countries reached 4.41 million as of 30 June 2026, the highest since the mechanism was activated in March 2022, according to data published by Eurostat on 11 August. The total rose by 24,380 (+0.6%) from the previous month.

The displacement is one dimension of the broader demographic damage that Russia's war is inflicting on Ukraine. The country's population has contracted from over 41 million before the full-scale invasion to roughly 31 million, driven by displacement, war casualties, and a fertility rate that has collapsed to among the lowest in the world. Only 23% of Ukrainian women refugees with children say they plan to return, even if the war ends.

The figure has been edging upward since mid-2023. It crossed 4 million in September 2023, reached 4.2 million by October 2024, and has now hit a new high. New decisions granting protection are now falling: EU countries issued 155,640 in the first quarter of 2026, down 17% from the previous quarter, and 2025's annual total was 14% below 2024's — even as the overall number of people already holding the status keeps rising.

The numbers suggest an accumulation effect: fewer people are leaving the system than are entering it. Cumulatively, EU countries have issued 7.1 million temporary protection decisions since March 2022, meaning roughly 2.7 million of those decisions are no longer active — as people returned to Ukraine, moved on, switched to other residence statuses, or were deregistered.

• Germany hosted the most beneficiaries at about 1.29 million (29.2% of the EU total), followed by Poland with roughly 961,000 (21.8%) and Czechia with about 391,000 (8.9%).
• Relative to population, the ranking shifts. Czechia recorded 35.8 beneficiaries per thousand residents, followed by Slovakia (27.2) and Cyprus (26.8), against an EU average of 9.8 per thousand.
• Protection numbers rose in 24 of 27 EU countries. Italy posted the largest absolute increase (+4,115, or +8.8%), followed by Czechia (+3,835) and Germany (+2,960). Poland was the only country with a significant decrease (-6,335, or -0.7%). Belgium and Ireland posted negligible declines.

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Ukrainian citizens accounted for over 98.5% of all beneficiaries. Adult women made up 43.4%, adult men 27%, and minors nearly a third (29.6%). The share of adult men has risen from 23% in October 2024, around the time Czech Interior Minister Lubomír Metnar's government pushed for the new military-compliance condition adopted by the Council in August.

The EU's temporary protection mechanism, activated in March 2022, has been renewed annually since. The most recent extension, a Council decision that took effect on 5 August, prolonged the framework to March 2028 while adding a new condition: Ukrainian men of military age applying for the first time must now prove they have met their mobilization obligations, including through Ukraine's Reserve+ app. The June data predates that rule, making it a baseline for measuring its impact.