Members of Greenpeace and the extremist climate change group Extinction Rebellion in Finland blocked a train they said was carrying Russian coal from reaching a port.
The activists blocked the train from reaching the port access at Koverhar in Hanko on Tuesday afternoon, with around 40 protestors occupying the railway tracks, some of which police say chained themselves to the tracks as well.
The protest began in the early afternoon and at around 2:15 pm according to a Twitter post by Extinction Rebellion Finland had blocked a train from entering the port. the train remained blocked for several hours, with another Twitter user later claiming the conductor of the train and police who arrived on the scene had left as of around 8:50 pm local time.
Raili Nylund, an Extinction Rebellion activist, commented on the action, saying, “It is shocking that, in this situation, we have not already moderated our energy consumption, even if we can at the same time put an end to the financing of the Russian dictatorship and contain the looming climate crisis,” Finnish broadcaster Yle reports.
“There is a direct link between heating the climate and this war. We finance Russian wars by buying fossil energy from it, and transit traffic through Finland which makes it possible to sell it on. I had hoped that this absurdity would have already been put to an end,” activist Elijah Saulio, who took part in the blockade, said.
Earlier this year, members of Extinction Rebellion in Ukraine linked European consumption of Russian fuels to the Russian invasion of their country.
“EU dependence on Russian energy – gas, coal and oil – financed Putin’s military ventures outside of Russia,” a Ukrainian member of the group named Sergiy said in late February.
“When Europe is so dependent on these fossil fuels from Russia, it gives him a lot of money. And you see this money has now been spent on transporting troops from Russia to Ukraine’s borders,” he added.
The UK branch of Extinction Rebellion has been launching blockades of roads and other infrastructure for many months prior to the Ukraine invasion and has called for European countries to not only decouple themselves from Russian gas and oil but to end using fossil fuels entirely.
Last week, the UK branch of the group disrupted the operations of oil depots for several days straight as Britons are being forced to pay higher and higher prices for fuel and energy.
The actions led even the left-wing Labour Party to denounce the actions of the group, with Labour leader sir Keir Starmer stating, “The government must stop standing idly by and immediately impose injunctions to put an end to this disruption.”
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