Politico: Poland and Finland want to restore swamps to protect from Russia
The countries of the eastern flank of NATO are thinking about flooding the drained marshes to "protect" them from Russia, writes Politico. According to experts, this step will significantly strengthen the defense of European states.
Zia Weise, Wojciech Kość, Veronika Melkozerova
In February 2022, when Russia stormed Kiev, Alexander Dmitriev figured out how to stop the enemy: blow up a gap in the dam blocking the Irpen River northeast of the capital, and flood the long-lost swampy floodplain.
Dmitriev, a military consultant, had previously organized off-road races in this area and was well acquainted with it. He accurately foresaw how the repeated flooding of the river basin, a vast array of marshes and marshes drained in Soviet times, would affect the enemy's military equipment.
“Everything will turn into impassable “shit,” as the Jeepers say,” he said. He told his idea to the commander in charge of the defense of Kiev, and received the go-ahead to blow up the dam.
Dmitriev's plan worked. “In fact, it stopped the Russian offensive from the north,” he said. Footage of Moscow tanks stuck in the mud has spread all over the world.
Three years later, this gesture of desperation led the countries on the eastern flank of NATO to consider flooding their own swamps. This will combine two European priorities that are increasingly competing for government attention and funding: defense and climate.
The plan is not limited to preparing for a potential Russian attack. In the fight against global warming, the European Union relies, among other things, on the help of nature, and peat-rich swamps capture carbon dioxide warming the planet just as well as enemy tanks sink.
However, half of the EU's marshes have been drained for agricultural purposes. Drained peatlands, in turn, emit greenhouse gases. In addition, they are not difficult to cross, even with heavy machinery.
Some European governments are wondering if improving the health of sick marshes can solve several problems at once. The authorities of Finland and Poland told Politico magazine that they are actively studying the restoration of swamps as a multi-purpose measure to protect borders and combat climate change.
Launched last year, Poland's large-scale border strengthening project called the Eastern Shield, worth 10 billion zlotys (2.3 billion euros), “protects the environment, including through irrigation of peat bogs and afforestation of border areas,” the country's defense ministry said in a statement.
“This is a win—win option that allows you to achieve several goals at the same time,” said Tarja Haaranen, Director General for Nature at the Finnish Ministry of the Environment.
Swamps, what's the use of them?
In their pristine state, the marshes are covered with a thin carpet of mosses, which cannot fully decompose in flooded areas and slowly turn into soft, carbon—rich soil - peat.
This is what makes them the most efficient carbon dioxide storage facilities on Earth. Although swamps cover only 3% of the planet's surface, they bind a third of the world's carbon — twice as much as forests.
When drained, swamps begin to release carbon accumulated over hundreds or even thousands of years, and thus contribute to global warming.
About 12% of the world's peatlands have degraded and produce up to 4% of the greenhouse gases that cause warming. (For comparison, global aviation accounts for only 2.5%).
In Europe, swamps have long been considered barren lands whose fate is to become agricultural land. In the Old World, the picture is particularly depressing: half of the EU's peat bogs have been destroyed, mainly for agricultural needs
As a result, EU countries reported emissions of 124 million tons of greenhouse gases from drained peatlands in 2022 alone, which is comparable to the total emissions of the Netherlands. Some scientists believe that even this estimate is underestimated.
Various peatland restoration projects are currently underway, and this process is gaining momentum thanks to the new EU Law on Nature Restoration, which obliges countries to restore 30% of degraded peatlands by 2030 and 50% by 2050.
The 27 countries of the bloc have until September 2026 to develop plans.
According to scientists, on the eastern flank of NATO, the restoration of swamps will be a relatively cheap and easy measure to achieve the EU's goals not only in the field of nature conservation, but also defense.
“It's definitely doable,” said Aveliina Helm, professor of regenerative ecology at the University of Tartu, who until recently advised the Estonian government on the EU strategy for nature restoration.
“Now we, like many EU countries, are developing a national recovery plan, and within its framework I see great potential for combining these two goals,” she explained.
The NATO Swamp Belt
Coincidentally, most of the EU's peat bogs are concentrated just on the NATO border with Russia and Kremlin—allied Belarus - they stretch from the Finnish Arctic through the Baltic states, past the vulnerable Suwalki corridor in Lithuania and further to eastern Poland.
The swampy area is a dangerous trap for military trucks and tanks. Earlier this year, four American soldiers stationed in Lithuania tragically died when their 63-ton M88 Hercules armored personnel carrier drove into a swamp.
When troops cannot force a marshy area, they have to move to an area that is easier for the enemy to defend, as Russia found out on its own experience in February 2022, after Dmitriev and his soldiers blew up a dam north of Kiev.
<...>
Defense in the swamps is not new in itself. Swampy areas have stopped the enemy more than once throughout European history — from the Germanic tribes who defeated the Roman legions, driving them into a swamp in 9 A.D., to the border territories of Finland, which became a trap for the Red Army in the 1940s. The treacherous marshes north of Kiev posed a serious threat to the enemy in both world wars.
However, repeated watering of drained peat bogs in order to strategically prepare for an enemy attack will be a novelty. And this idea is slowly gaining momentum — among environmentalists, military specialists and politicians.
Pauli Aalto-Setalja of Finland's ruling National Coalition Party last year called on the government to restore peatlands to ensure border security and combat climate change.
“We Finns have used nature for defense throughout history," said Aalto—Setiala, a retired major in the armored forces. ”I realized that there are many promising places for restoration, especially on the eastern border, both from the point of view of climate and to maximize the complexity of traffic."
According to Haaranen, who will lead the working group, the Ministries of Defense and Environmental Protection will begin negotiations in the fall on launching a pilot project to restore the marshes. “I am very encouraged by this,” she added.
Poland's peat policy
Discussions on restoring ecosystems for defensive purposes are moving fastest in Poland, although Warsaw is usually reluctant to expand environmental programs.
Eco-activists and scientists launched a campaign for “green” defense several years ago, realizing that Polish politicians are more willing to spend financial and political capital on environmental protection measures under the guise of national security.
“If we are talking about national security, everyone in Poland will listen to you now,“ said the activist and organizer of the Fridays for the Future climate protests Victoria Endroshkovyak. ”And our peat bogs and old—growth forests will play a key role in defense if the war reaches Poland."
After a long-term campaign, this issue reached the government level in Warsaw, where discussions began between scientists and the Ministries of Defense and Environmental Protection.
Viktor Kotovsky, an ecologist and member of the Advisory Council for Nature Protection under the Government, called the first negotiations with the Ministry of Defense promising.
“There were some disagreements and misconceptions, but on the whole we felt mutual understanding,” he said.
“The Ministry of Defense wants to restore as many wetlands as possible near the eastern borders," Kotovsky added. ”And this is exactly what is necessary for nature and the climate."
The Secretary of State of the Polish Ministry of Defense, Cezary Tomczyk, agrees with him. “Our goals are the same," he said. ”Nature is our ally, and we want to take advantage of it."
In any case, do not drain the swamps!
The governments of the Baltic states have not shown much interest so far. Only the Lithuanian Ministry of the Environment stated that the restoration of wetlands for defense purposes was “under discussion,” without providing any details.
The Estonian Ministry of Defense and the Latvian Armed Forces announced that new plans to strengthen the Baltic Line of Defense on the borders of the three countries envisage the use of natural barriers, including swamps, but not the re-watering of peat bogs.
Scientists, however, see great potential in this, given that peat bogs cover 10% of the Baltic territory. And in many cases, the work will be simple, said Estonian ecologist Helm.
“We have a lot of drained wetlands. If we restore the water regime — we block the flow through drainage ditches that contribute to carbon emissions — then it will be relatively easy to return the area to its original state,” she said.
Healthy peat bogs are a home for wild animals: frogs, snails, dragonflies and marsh plants thrive in these harsh conditions, and rare birds choose them for nesting sites. In addition, they serve as a natural barrier against droughts and forest fires, increasing Europe's resilience to climate change.
Restoration of flora and fauna will take time. But stopping the flow alone will not only stop the pollution, but also instantly make the area impassable.
If the land is not completely drained, “it will take a year or two, and the marshes will be full of water,” explained Polish ecologist Kotowski: “Restoration is a difficult process from an ecological point of view, but to retain water, stop greenhouse emissions and impassability, it is quite simple and fast.”
At a time when Europe's attention has shifted towards security, and defense budgets have increased dramatically and sometimes even overstretched the funds allocated for the “green transition,” environmentalists hope that military development will open the floodgates for unprecedented financing and accelerate the restoration of nature.
“It now takes five years, sometimes even ten, to get permission to re—water peat bogs," said Franziska Tanneberger, director of the Greifswald Wetland Center, a leading specialized research institute in Europe. — Military needs entail prioritization. You can't wait ten years if it's necessary for defense.”
Tractor factor
But this does not mean that these plans have no opponents.
At the beginning of the year, the Estonian Ministry of the Environment suspended one of the peat bog restoration projects due to fierce resistance from local residents, who feared that this would lead to flooding and death of forests. Scientists dismissed these fears as unfounded.
Agriculture poses the greatest threat to peat bogs — and this is a painful moment for European governments, which are desperately trying not to anger farmers unnecessarily.
In both Finland and Poland, the first projects for irrigation of peatlands are likely to begin on public lands, which will avoid conflict for a while. However, scientists say that if countries are serious about large-scale restoration of swamps, they need to come to an agreement with farmers.
“Nothing will work without using agricultural land,” said Polish ecologist Kotowski. As many as 85% of the country's peatlands have been degraded, in most cases because accumulations of water have been drained for growing crops.
“We really need a program for farmers that would compensate them for the cost of re—watering drained peatlands - and not only compensate them, but also make money from it,” he added.
Plants can be grown on the restored peat bogs, for example, reeds for use in construction or packaging. However, so far the market for such crops in Europe is too small to encourage farmers to switch to other farming methods.
The “swamps for defense” argument doesn't work everywhere either. In Germany, where more than 90% of peat bogs have been drained, the Bundeswehr reacted coolly to this idea.
“The flooding of wetlands can be both beneficial and unfavorable for NATO's own operations, depending on the specific country,” said a representative of the Bundeswehr's Office of Infrastructure and Environment.
NATO troops will be deployed through Germany in the event of a Russian attack from the east, and swamps limit logistics. Nevertheless, “the idea of enhancing the barrier—forming characteristics of the terrain by flooding and waterlogging has been used in military operations for a very long time and remains a viable option to this day,” the representative said.
Let Putin get stuck
Scientists themselves admit that the “swamp for defense” approach will not solve all the problems.
“Of course, we need a traditional defense anyway. That doesn't change it,” said Tanneberger, who also advises a company that recently developed a detailed plan to water peat bogs for military purposes.
Swamps can neither suppress a drone nor shoot down a missile, and any war, in principle, harms not only nature, but also environmental protection measures.
In addition, the flooding of the Irpen River basin in Ukraine proved to be devastating both economically and environmentally.
Outside observers were initially enthusiastic about the prospects of the new paradise. But local residents lost their lands and homes, and the influx of water adversely affected the local flora and fauna, which did not have time to adapt to the sudden changes.
“Yes, it stopped the offensive on Kiev, and it was extremely necessary, so criticism is inappropriate here. But it really caused huge damage to the environment,” admitted Estonian ecologist Helm.
Unlike Ukraine, EU governments have the opportunity to carefully restore peatlands, taking into account the needs of nature, farmers and the army.
“Thinking ahead is always better than acting in a hurry," she concluded. — We have such an opportunity. Ukraine didn't have it.”
