A civilian was shot dead in a confuse incident at Höyhenjärvi, and there was a minor skirmish with local residents and Red Guards at the village of Salmijärvi, which had been fully evacuated by its inhabitants.
The British, who were intervening in the Russia Civil War and had established their headquarters at Murmansk, sent in the cruiser HMS Cochrane with sailors, Royal Marines and 40 Red Army soldiers, who took positions around the Pechenga Monastery.
[5] The first clash between the opposing forces happened in early May, when a party of White Finnish ski troops beat off a patrol of Royal Marines and sailors from HMS Cochrane.
[5] British sources claim that the action took place on 8 May and that it involved 15 local skiers and at least 30 Royal Marines commanded by Captain Vincent Brown, a veteran of the Western Front.
Although the party spotted HMS Cochrane, Laitinen took for granted that no enemy troops were deployed in the area, and decided not to send reconnaissance platoons to the villages surrounding Petsamo.
The northern wing was attacked from three different directions, while the southern group was outnumbered by a column of Russian sailors who launched a counterattack from the monastery, supported by gunfire from HMS Cochrane.
[7] The expedition fell back 60 km in a day, and on 15 May, after reaching the border post of Virtaniemi, they sent a telegram to the Finnish Senate reporting their failure at Petsamo; in the case of Laitinen, he presented his resignation.
On 13 June, a party of 16 men commanded by Helge Aspelsund, the young officer who had been in charge of the expedition's recce patrol, attempted a landing in three fishing boats on Töllev, on the eastern shores of Lake Klistervatnet, to relieve nearby Kolttakönkä, a border outpost between Norway and Petsamo.
The British responded in September, explaining that they did not oppose to Finland's sovereignty over Petsamo, but as long as Germany represented a threat to Murmansk they could not accede to that demand.
[11] Finland and Soviet Russia held peace talks in Berlin in August 1918, but no agreement resulted since the Bolshevik government refused to hand the Kola peninsula over.
[12] Hopes that the armistice with Germany in November 1918 would mean the withdrawal of British and Allied forces from northern Russia were quickly quashed when the skirmishes with the Red Army soon developed into open conflict.
[13] When the campaign became increasingly unpopular in Britain, and the Allied armies began to evacuated the region for good in September 1919,[14] the White Russian resistance quickly collapsed.
The rationale for the expedition was the request of White Russian General Yevgeny Miller to the Finnish government for reconnecting the telegraph line between Alexandrovsk and Rovaniemi.
The works would take place on Finnish territory, but the authorities deemed necessary to provide security on the Russian side of the border, with Miller's consensus.
Norwegian authorities planned to hold a referendum to determine whether or not residents in the area desired to join their country, while local populations, who feared that the expedition could put their trade with Norway at risk, had an unfriendly attitude toward the volunteers[16] on both sides of the border.
The Finnish government sent a battalion and resupplies aboard the steamer Silvia, but the arrival of fresh troops was delayed by a month when the cargo ship ran aground in the Danish straits and had to be docked.
The Russians warships shelled the slopes where the Finnish troops were deployed, and the Red Army soon blocked the retreat route of the forward outposts.
[21][20] As negotiations with Russia loomed, the expedition, now reinforced, was banned from crossing the frontier and expended the next three months performing drills and border guarding.