Russian forces would have reached Kyiv in “four hours” had their tanks not got “stuck in the mud”, Donald Trump outlandishly claimed last month.
The reality was not so simple. As Moscow’s troops marched towards the Ukrainian capital in February 2022, Ukraine took a desperate gamble. It blew a hole in a dam that had choked the Irpin river north of Kyiv, flooding a long-lost wetland basin. The land turned into an almighty, impassable swamp that helped shield the city as Russian tanks languished in thick, black sludge.
The drastic measure sent a message: let nature fight for you in war. Countries along Nato’s frontier took note.
Polish and Finnish officials have now told The Telegraph they are considering restoring their nations’ bogs and marshes to sink heavy vehicles such as tanks and combat climate change at the same time.
Russian forces’ assault on Kyiv was stymied by the swampland outside the city – Serhii Mykhalchuk/Getty Images
Peat-rich bogs coat huge swathes of EU land from the Finnish Arctic, down through the Baltic states, across the Suwalki Gap and on to eastern Poland.
Bogs are nature’s most effective carbon dioxide stores – but if drained, they release centuries’ worth of carbon into the atmosphere, dramatically fuelling global warming.
Half of the bogs in Europe have been lost or converted to farmland, and in response, the EU is prioritising reviving 30 per cent of degraded peatlands by 2030 to combat climate change and promote biodiversity.
But the idea of restoring bogs and marshes as a defensive strategy is new.
As part of Poland’s £1.9 billion, Eastern Shield fortification project, peatland and forests close to its borders will be revived and expanded.
“The natural environment in the border areas is an obvious ally of any actions enhancing the elements of Eastern Shield,” a spokesman for Poland’s ministry of defence said.
In Finland, a bog-restoration pilot has begun close to its border with Russia, The Telegraph has learnt.
“Wetlands have remained undrained as an important defence strategy in Europe.
“In the 18th and 19th centuries, they provided natural borders and were valued as defensive obstacles. Now we recognise this importance for wetlands again,” said Wiktor Kotowski, a wetland ecologist who advises Poland’s government on nature conservation.
The treacherous, waterlogged terrain is “literally un-crossable for heavy vehicles”, he said. That was evident this year, when four US soldiers stationed in Lithuania were killed during a training exercise when they drove a 63-ton armoured vehicle into a swamp.
Environmentalists, politicians and defence officials are increasingly seeing the opportunity that emerges when policies to protect the environment intersect with defensive strategies.
Pauli Aalto-Setälä, an MP in Finland’s governing National Coalition party and former tank officer, was the first politician to call on the government to restore the wetlands that cover its eastern border as a dual climate and defence strategy last year.
“There are not many things that environmental activists and defence officials agree on and here we find great common ground,” Mr Aalto-Setälä told The Telegraph.
Boggy terrain accounts for around one-third of Finland’s land mass, half of which has already been drained. But the country has been carrying out a large-scale restoration drive.
Finland’s boggy terrain could provide the country with a natural defence against the Kremlin’s tank columns – OLIVIER MORIN/AFP via Getty Images
Mr Aalto-Setälä said tests to restore bogs close to the border have already begun.
“It’s not rocket science, it can be done relatively easily and quickly, unlike reforesting, which will take decades.” He estimated it could take as little as a year to flood the country’s bogs on its eastern border once again.
“Nature has always been an important part of Finland’s defence,” Pekka Toveri, a Finnish MEP and retired general, said, citing the difficulties Soviet tanks faced traversing Finland’s marshy and wooded terrain when they invaded in 1939.
Bringing back bogs will be seen as a “win-win”, he said. “It is a good example of innovation in defence and I hope it is taken seriously.”
The retired general argued that a lot can be learned from Moscow’s failures in manoeuvrability in Ukraine. “Russia has had huge problems crossing even narrow water obstacles. The simple and cheap measure of rewetting the wetlands will do the same thing here.”
Finnish soldiers blend into the landscape during Russia’s invasion in 1939 – Hulton Archive
The Baltic states, which share a 600-mile border with Russia and Belarus, are also listening to the proposals.
Estonia’s climate ministry told Politico last week that it was actively exploring whether to restore its swamps and marshes to help protect against a Russian attack and battle global warming.
Along with Lithuania and Latvia, the country is already planning to integrate existing peatlands into their new Baltic Defence Line to keep Russia at bay, although the plans do not yet involve peatland restoration.
But bog-based defence plans won’t work in every European Nato country. For example, Germany, which has had most of its peatlands drained or otherwise destroyed, appears far less keen.
“The rewetting of wetlands can be both an advantage and a disadvantage for one’s own operations, Natalie Jenning, of the federal defence ministry, told The Telegraph.
A “key concern” is that if Nato is attacked, the alliance’s forces would need to move quickly through Germany to the east.
However, “hindering an enemy’s movements” through flooding and swamping “has been used in warfare for a very long time and is still a viable option today”, Ms Jenning noted.
There are also other evident issues, including having to deal with privately owned land and stopping forestry or agriculture in some areas, affecting potentially thousands of livelihoods.
The flooding of the Irpin basin helped win the battle for Kyiv, but it was hugely ecologically destructive and painful for those whose homes and lands were flooded.
Finland and Poland’s proposals are likely to focus on state-owned land for now, but if plans become reality and are scaled up, that problem cannot be avoided.
Prof Kotowski, the Polish ecologist, argued that despite resistance, there is not a good enough reason not to revive Nato’s bogs as a defensive shield.
“War is not what we scientists would like to link our biodiversity agenda with, but we must restore the peatlands, and now we have a new impetus to do this,” he said.
