Finland has sent a diplomatic note to Russia about vandalism to its embassy in Moscow.
The wall around the Finnish Embassy was defaced on Friday, ambassador Marja Liivala told the Finnish news agency STT on Sunday.
The Swedish text "Åland är vårt" ("Åland is ours") was painted on the wall, along with the letters "SD" - possibly a reference to the Swedish nationalist party Sverigedemokraterna. In addition, eggs were thrown at and over the fence.
"The police intervened quickly and detained the perpetrators. There seemed to be five men involved," Liivala told Yle. She said she had no information about the nationalities of those detained.
The Swedish-speaking Åland Islands is an autonomous, demilitarised maritime province of Finland. A Russian consulate in Åland’s capital, Mariehamn, has drawn repeated protests since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Last December, the Speaker of the Finnish Parliament refused to consider a citizens' initiative calling for the closure of the consulate.
Ministry: Finland takes incident seriously
The ambassador declined to reveal any details of the content of the diplomatic note.
"Of course, in such cases, it is always customary to send a note that highlights the problem," she said.
She also declined to speculate on the motivation for the incident.
"These kind of unpleasant incidents happen from time to time, although of course they shouldn't," she said.
According to Liivala, no criminal complaint has been filed.
Liivala said that the graffiti was being removed and the wall repainted. She did not have an estimate of the costs of the cleanup job.
In a statement, the Foreign Ministry described the incident as "unfortunate". "Finland takes the matter seriously," it told STT.
Former German seaside property seized
Three Russian-owned buildings in the Åland municipality of Saltvik were among more than 40 properties seized by Finland in October.
That followed a ruling by the International Court of Arbitration in The Hague ordering Russian property to be confiscated to cover compensation to the Ukrainian energy corporation Naftogaz for Russia’s destruction of its property in Crimea.
Finland was the first country to act on the ruling. Moscow has vowed to take legal action in response to the seizures.
A decade ago, Yle quoted Jarmo Ratia, former director of the National Land Survey of Finland, as saying that Russian President Vladimir Putin had owned a 1.78-hectare shoreline property in Saltvik, Åland since 2009.
An Åland official said the plot had been in Russian or Soviet hands since 1947.
The premises were transferred to the Soviet Union in accordance with the Paris Peace Treaties, which stipulated that German properties be handed over to Moscow. The property had previously been owned by a Finnish-German couple, she said.
