I'm unsure whether my question is on-topic here, but it's about travel and border crossing, so I've decided to try.
I'm writing an article about Russian borders, focusing on illegal crossings in both directions. The aim of the article is not to give specific hints to potential illegal border crossers, but to give an objective picture of how well Russia's vast land borders are guarded by Russian border guards and their counterparts on the other side of the border and what are the implications for illegal migration, smuggling, drug trafficking, etc. As a student learning the Russian language, I've been able to find and read various Russian posts and articles about the matter, but almost all information I found dates back to a decade ago or so, so I'm unsure about the current situation. But back then, there were many "holes" in the Russian border. In particular, a large part of the Russian border with Latvia, an EU member, goes through wild swampy forests and was barely marked, let alone guarded, back then. A more or less recent article shows a part of the Russian border with another EU member, Estonia:
The border control officer interviewed in that article says that a very large part of the Russian-Estonian border is like that, and compares that forest to a jungle. The article makes it very clear that illegal crossings do occur, although some border crossers get caught.
My question: How easy is it to illegally cross the Russian border nowadays? Am I right in understanding that you still can easily cross the Russian border illegally in any direction if you do your homework, take a compass, and avoid silly mistakes like using electronic devices in the border region?
I emphasize that I'm not looking for border-crossing advice and merely want to read the information that sheds light on the overall picture and might help me write my article - e.g., statistics, personal accounts written by refugees, etc. My impression is that there's a big problem that is largely ignored and swept under the rug, and I'd like to know whether my impression is correct and how I can back it up with facts in my article.