The closure of the Narva border checkpoint in Northeastern Estonia has increased traffic at the country's southeastern border checkpoints by some 15 percent. That is not nearly as much as was feared, and authorities working at the border have not needed additional backup.

"The intensity has increased, but we are nowhere near pre-COVID volumes – so our current human resources are entirely adequate," said Peter Maran, chief of the Police and Border Guard Board's (PPA) Koidula checkpoint.

"There are more cars with Finnish [license] plates," Maran continued. "There are significantly more cars with diplomatic plates. Even coach buses, which have previously crossed the border via Finnish border checkpoints."

Wait times for trucks at the border have stretched to more than three weeks long. There are currently 490 trucks waiting in the waiting areas and another more than 730 trucks waiting in electronic lines of Estonia's Koidula and Luhamaa border checkpoints.

The Russian propaganda machine, meanwhile, is taking advantage of the situation that has developed, claiming that Estonian authorities are obstructing traffic.

"Actually, the fact of the matter is that our capacity is currently greater than the [number of] cars currently crossing the border at Luhamaa," said Toomas Huik, Estonian Tax and Customs Board (MTA) chief at the Luhamaa border checkpoint. "At the moment, it is the pace of the Russian side determining the actual number of border crossings."

As fewer and fewer border crossings remain through which one can travel to Russia, one thing that has been taking place over the past month is the introduction of Estonia's waiting area system.

"With only four land border checkpoints directly to Russia open at present, cars from all over Europe have converged here," Huik explained. "There are new carriers here who have never been through our system before. Together with the Border Guard, we have been raisin these border crossers and taught them how things work, because there have also been a lot of truck scams here in which they've attempted to jump the line into the priority line."

The MTA official noted that wait times at the Latvian border are even longer, and that they have done away with priority lines altogether.

These priority lines have been meant for time-sensitive goods such as flowers – which previously had never been transported through Estonia's southeastern border checkpoints before.

"Cut flowers were transported via Narva to the market in St. Petersburg," Huik noted. "Right now, both Luhamaa and Koidula have experienced a boom in flower transport. Today is Women's Day, and leading up to it there were up to 10-15 loads of flowers a day. That was major and extensive additional documentation we ended up seeing."

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