Northern Dimension to include Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland, the importance of the Northern Dimension has increased considerably: eight EU Member States (Denmark, Germany, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Finland, and Sweden) surround the Baltic Sea, and the EU’s shared border with Russia has lengthened. Recent years have seen far-reaching changes in the geopolitical map of northern Europe. The Baltic States regained their independence in 1991. Finland and Sweden joined the EU in 1995, and Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland in 2004. These events greatly increased the Northern and Baltic “presence” of the EU, and substantially lengthened the common border shared by the
Finland–Russia border flag operation as the pretext to provoke the Winter War a few days later. According to a Russian media report, Finland closed its border crossing with Russia, a counterpart to the Russian border post, on 4 December 2015, an hour and a half before the day's scheduled closing time and thus prevented fifteen people of Mid-East origin from crossing the border. According to the same source, some Finnish border officials confirmed that Raja-Jooseppi had closed early that day while a spokesman for the same department said the checkpoint closed at its regular time of 2100 hours. Note the time zone