Russian armed forces would have reached Kyiv in “four hours” if their tanks are not “stuck in the mud”, Donald Trump claimed bizarre last month.
The reality was not that easy. While the Moscow troops marched to the Ukrainian capital in February 2022, Ukraine took a desperate gamble. It blew a gap in a dam that had suffocated the Irpin river north of Kiev and flooded a long-lost leg land basin. The country turned into an almighty, impassable swamp that helped the city protecting while Russian tanks got away in thick, black sludge.
The drastic measure sent a message: let nature fight for you at war. Countries along the border of NATO took knowledge.
Polish and Finnish officials have now told De Telegraaf that she is considering restoring the swamps and swamps of their nations to sink heavy vehicles such as tanks and at the same time combat climate change.
The attack of Russian armed forces on Kiev was hampered by the swamp outside the city – Serhii Mykhalchuk/Getty Images
Turf-rich swamp jacket huge parts of the EU country from the Finnish North Pole area, through the Baltic States, over the Suwalki gorge and further to the east of Poland.
Mogs are the most effective carbon dioxide stores of nature – but when they are empty, they give carbon in the atmosphere for centuries, so that global warming is dramatically fueled.
Half of the swamps in Europe are lost or converted into agricultural land, and in response, the EU prioritizes to breathe new life from 30 percent of the affected peat areas by 2030 to combat climate change and promote biodiversity.
But the idea of restoring swamps and marshes as a defensive strategy is new.
As part of the £ 1.9 billion of Poland, the eastern shielding project of the shield, Veenland and forests close to its limits will be revived and expanded.
“The natural environment in the border areas is an obvious ally of all actions that improve the elements of the eastern shield,” said a spokesperson for the Ministry of Defense Van Poland.
In Finland a pilot of the swamp area was started close to his border with Russia, the Telegraph has learned.
“Wetlands are undrained as an important defense strategy in Europe.
“In the 18th and 19th centuries they provided natural boundaries and were appreciated as defensive obstacles. Now we recognize this interest for Wetlands again,” said Wiktor Kotowski, a Wetland -Ecologist who advises the government of Poland on nature conservation.
The treacherous, water -rich terrain can “literally not be crossed for heavy vehicles,” he said. That was clear this year, when four American soldiers stationed in Lithuania were killed during a training exercise when they drove an armored vehicle of 63 tons in a swamp.
Environmental activists, politicians and defense officials are increasingly seeing the chance that comes to the fore when the policy to protect the environment cross each other with defensive strategies.
Pauli Aalto-Setälä, a member of parliament in the Finland's Regning National Coalition Party and former tank officer, was the first politician to call on the government to restore the Wetlands who cover its eastern border last year as a double climate and defense strategy.
“There are not many things that environmental activists and defense officials agree and here we find a big common basis,” Mr Aalto-Setälä told the Telegraph.
Boggy site accounts for about a third of the Finland's land mass, half of which has already been removed. But the country has carried out a large -scale restoration drive.
The Drassy site of Finland could offer the country a natural defense against the tank columns of the Kremlin – Olivier Morin/AFP via Getty images
Mr Aalto-Setälä said that tests to restore swamps close to the border, already started.
“It is not rocket science, it can be done relatively easily and quickly, in contrast to the rescue, which will last decades.” He estimated that it could take as little as a year to flood the swamps of the country on the eastern border again.
“Nature has always been an important part of the defense of Finland,” said Pekka Teveri, a Finnish MEP and retired general, referring to the difficulties that Soviet tanks were confronted with traving the swampy and wooded terrain in Finland when they invaded in 1939.
Returning marshes will be seen as a “win-win,” he said. “It is a good example of innovation in the defense and I hope it will be taken seriously.”
The retired general argued that a lot can be learned from the failures of Moscow in the maneuverability in Ukraine. “Russia has had huge problems crossing even narrow water obstacles. The simple and cheap benchmark for re -driving the Wetlands will do the same here.”
Finnish soldiers merged the landscape during the invasion of Russia in 1939 – Hulton Archive
The Baltic states, which share a border between 600 miles with Russia and Belarus, also listen to the proposals.
The Climate Minister of Estonia told Polito last week that it was actively investigating whether it had to recover his swamps and swamps to help protect against a Russian attack and fight global heating.
Together with Lithuania and Latvia, the country is already planning to integrate existing peat areas into their new Baltic line of defense to keep Russia at a distance, although the plans do not yet restrain the peat area.
But BOG-based defense plans do not work in every European NATO country. Germany, which has drained or otherwise destroyed most of its peat areas, seems much less enthusiastic.
“Restarting Wetlands can be both an advantage and a disadvantage for its own operations, Natalie Jenning, of the Federal Ministry of Defense, told The Telegraph.
An “important care” is that if NATO is attacked, the armed forces of the Alliance have to go to the east quickly through Germany.
“The movements of an enemy” hinder “by floods and swamp” has been used at warfare for a long time and is still a feasible option today, “MS Jenning noted.
There are also other clear issues, including having private land and stopping forestry or agriculture in some areas that may affect thousands of existence.
The flood of the IRPIN pelvis helped in winning the battle for Kiev, but it was enormously ecologically destructive and painful for those whose houses and countries were flooded.
The proposals from Finland and Poland will probably focus on Staatsland for the time being, 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 enough reason not to breathe new life into NATO's swamps as a defensive shield.
“War is not what we scientists want to link our biodiversity agenda, but we have to restore the peat areas, and now we have a new impulse to do this,” he said.
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