Europe floods its borders to stop Russia: Finland and Poland turn frontiers into anti-tank swamps as Germany warns Ukraine is ‘just the start of Putin’s plans for conquest’ and EU stockpiles food

European countries are bracing themselves for an imminent war with Russia by turning borders into defensive swampland and stockpiling essential goods such as food, water and medicine in preparation for a crisis.

Several members of the 27-nation bloc are taking the drastic measures in anticipation of an invasion by Russian President Vladimir Putin, who could turn his sights towards conquering European countries after proving triumphant in Ukraine. 

The defence ministries of Finland and Poland are calling for the restoral of their nation’s bogs and marshes, making it impossible for Russian tanks to attack as any advance would be prevented by their heavy vehicles sinking into swampland.

It comes as German Chancellor Friedrich Merz issued a warning on Monday that Putin’s ‘imperialist plan wouldn’t end with the conquest of Ukraine but would rather be just the start’. 

Meanwhile, Brussels has launched a ‘stockpiling strategy’ to ensure the continuity of key goods across Europe in the face of potential crises such as energy blackouts, pandemics, climate change and World War.

The EU is also pushing for every household to have a three-day survival kit, including matches, ID documents in a waterproof punch, bottled water, energy bars and a flashlight.

And France’s government has told its health bodies to expect for a ‘major engagement’ by March 2026 by asking hospitals to prepare for a potential flood of military patients from home and abroad.

It follows Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s warning that Putin could attack a NATO country within the next five years, as he criticised the alliance for a slow spending ramp up in June. 

There is a precedent in Ukraine for using the natural capability of viscous wetlands to ward off deadly Russian onslaughts.

As Russian soldiers marched towards Kyiv in February 2022, Ukraine took a desperate measure. To repel Putin’s advance, the armed forces blew a hole in the soviet-era Kozarovychi Dam on the Irpin river north of Kyiv, flooding 2,800 hectares of land. 

The last-ditch attempt to shield the city paid off. As the land transformed into an impenetrable, black swamp, advancing Russian tanks found themselves ‘stuck in the mud’ as US President Donald Trump claimed last month.

Now, there are mounting calls in Europe to accelerate the restoration of bogs and marshes as a measure to combat climate change and to bolster defense.

Peatlands are unique ecosystems that naturally store large amounts of carbon dioxide. But if drained, they exude centuries’ worth of carbon into the atmosphere, contributing towards global warming. 

After World War II, huge quantities of wetland were converted into profitable farmland. Nearly half of all peatlands in Europe are degraded, mostly due to artificial drainage – causing a toll on the environment.

EU countries reported 124 million tons of greenhouse gas pollution from drained peatlands in 2022, close to the annual emissions of the Netherlands. Some scientists say even this is an underestimate.

That’s why the bloc is prioritising restoring 30 percent of degraded peatlands over the next five years, and 50% by 2050 – to slow climate change, promote biodiversity, and now, ready border nations for potential war.

As part of Poland’s £1.9 billion Eastern Shield development project for defence infrastructure, swamplands and forests close to its borders with Russia will be 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. 

On top of plans to expand swampland to deter Putin’s troops, this summer the country added protective minefields to a 20-kilometre stretch of land bordering Russia and Belarus. The size of the armed forces stood at about 190,000 personnel at the end of last year, including ground, air, naval, special forces and territorial defence forces. Poland plans to increase this to 300,000 troops within a few years.

‘Drained peatland makes up 10 percent of Finland’s agricultural land, but it produces more than half of the agricultural greenhouse gas emissions,’ Kristiina Lang, a research professor and peat specialist at the Natural Resources Institute of Finland told France24. 

In Finland, there are some obvious locations that could be considered for large-scale rewetting, such as swathes of land drained for forestry that failed to grow any trees. 

‘It’s very logical to wet these large areas again,’ Lang said. ‘And if we need to rewet part of our peatlands anyway, then why not close to the eastern border?’

Scientists argue that restoring bogs on NATO’s eastern flank would be a relatively cheap and effective measure to achieve EU climate targets and defense goals in one fell swoop.

But there are environmental downsides and complications associated with the plan to revive Europe’s swamps. For one, people with privately-owned land in areas that have been earmarked for rewetting will be opposed to the move. 

Moreover, when Ukraine flooded the Irpin basin in a desperate attempt at defense, it was hugely ecologically destructive in the nearby residential areas, and the release of sewage and heavy metals harmed the environment.

Governments in the Baltic states which share a 600-mile border with Russia and Belarus have shown little interest in the project so far, apart from Lithuania, which said defense-linked wetland restoration ‘is currently under discussion’, according to Politico.

The Baltic country has recently revealed plans to dig a 30-mile-wide ribbon of defences on its borders with Russia and Belarus that will include minefields and bridges set to blow up in case Moscow invades.

For the past year, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania have been fortifying their borders, adding obstacles and redoubts to existing fences amid Russia’s mounting aggression.

When complete, the Baltic defence line is estimated to be more than 940 miles long and will limit Russia’s ability to launch attacks from its own territory, Kaliningrad and Belarus.

Lithuania, in particular, began setting up dozens of so-called ‘engineering parks’ filled with ‘counter-mobility’ equipment.

These initially included razor wire, concrete roadblocks, Czech Hedgehogs (a type of anti-tank barrier), as well as dragon’s teeth (concrete pyramids).

But Lithuania has now said that it is looking to further layer its defences, stretching them wide enough to protect Vilnius, the capital. Lithuania’s border with Kaliningrad and Belarus is over 590 miles long. 

The new ribbon will be made of three layers. The first, estimated to be three miles wide, will begin with an anti-tank ditch next to the border fence. This will then be followed by an embankment, strips of dragon’s teeth and minefields, and then two layers of strongpoints for defending infantry.

The second and third layers will see bridges primed with explosives that can be detonated at will, as well as more lines of infantry. 

Estonia approved a four-year €2.8 billion (£2.4 billion) additional defence funding bill earlier this year, pushing the Baltic country to an average defence spending of 5.4 percent of GDP through to 2029.

Merz told a conference of Germany’s ambassadors that ‘we are experiencing daily and with increasing intensity hybrid Russian attacks, including on our infrastructure’ and pointed to Moscow’s ‘provocations in the North and Baltic Seas’.

Germany has been Ukraine’s second-biggest supplier of military aid since Russia’s invasion began in 2022 and has been on high alert for sabotage plots directed from Moscow.

Merz has moved to ramp up Germany’s defence capacities in the face of Trump’s questioning of the future strength of the transatlantic alliance and wants Germany to have Europe’s ‘strongest conventional army’.

‘We have historic tasks,’ Merz said on Monday, namely ‘building a new security architecture which should last for several decades to come’.

‘What we referred to as the liberal world order is under pressure from many sides, including within the political West,’ he said.

‘A new conflict between systems has broken out between liberal democracies and an axis of autocracies.’

The EU this year launched a broad readiness push to bolster its militaries and try to ensure it can defend itself by 2030.

‘The goal is very simple to make sure that essential supplies that keep our societies running, especially the ones that save lives, are always available,’ EU crisis management commissioner Hadja Lahbib said. 

Meanwhile, French hospitals have been ordered to make preparations for an imminent war. 

‘Among the risks identified is the hypothesis of a major engagement where the health issue would consist of taking care of a potentially high influx of victims from abroad,’ the ministry of health said in a statement. 

‘It is therefore a question for our health system of anticipating the care of military patients in the civilian health system’. 

Britain, despite having more recent memory of armed conflicts than many of its allies on the continent, has fallen behind in civil planning. 

In November, the chief of the UK defence staff said that Britain simply does not have ‘some of the civil aspects or planning aspects’ that other allies have ‘as part of their traditions’. 

Admiral Sir Tony Radakin told the Berlin security conference that ‘we are having those conversations to learn from our colleagues and see what might be appropriate for ourselves’.

Other countries are more prepared. In November last year, Sweden announced that it would be sending out five million pamphlets to its population just north of 10 million, urging preparedness for the possibility of a lasting conflict.

NATO chief Mark Rutte sounded the alarm in July about a major conflict that he anticipates would be started by simultaneous invasions from Xi and Putin.

He claimed that combined attacks from the Russian and Chinese leaders would trigger a World War nightmare and bring the planet to the brink of Armageddon.

According to the NATO chief, China would start by seeking to grab Taiwan – while ensuring the Kremlin dictator simultaneously attacks NATO territory, amid fears Putin is eyeing the Baltic republics.