Europe’s plan to stop Putin invading: Continent floods its borders and builds new defences, with war ‘closer than it’s been since 1945’

UK Defence Secretary John Healey has warned Vladimir Putin is ‘testing’ the West after Russian drones violated Polish airspace on Tuesday night, forcing a multinational response.

More than eight million Poles were ordered to hide in their homes as the drones flew overhead, with debris from one shot-down device severely damaging a house.

Poland’s prime minister, Donald Tusk, condemned the unprecedented violation of the country’s airspace, saying: ‘This situation brings us all closer to open conflict, closer than at any time since the Second World War.’

Poland invoked NATO’s Article 4, under which any member can call urgent talks when it feels its ‘territorial integrity, political independence or security’ are at risk.

Mark Rutte, Secretary General of the military alliance, issued a stark warning to the Russian president, telling him to ‘stop violating allied airspace, and know that we stand ready, that we are vigilant, and that we will defend every inch of NATO territory’.

Up to four of the 19 Russian drones were shot down by Polish and NATO aircraft – the first time Kremlin drones have been downed while flying above a NATO territory. Those that entered Poland were part of a huge overnight attack on Ukraine, during which Russia launched 415 drones.

As Europe braces for an imminent war with Russia, countries are turning their 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 the Russian president – with the Polish incursion showing that Putin seems to be already turning his sights beyond Kyiv.

The defence ministries of Finland and Poland are calling for the restoration 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 warned 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 comes after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s said Putin could attack a NATO country within the next five years, as he criticised the alliance for a slow spending ramp up in June. But the threat could emerge much sooner, with Healey remarking that ‘Putin hit a new level of hostility against Europe’ after the Polish incursion.

Russia says it did not plan to attack any targets in Poland, but Warsaw’s defence minister hit back at any theories about an accidental malfunction. ‘Russian drones have veered into Polish airspace before – not just drones but also cruise missiles,’ Radoslaw Sikorski said.

‘When one or two drones does it, it is possible that it was a technical malfunction, but in this case there were 19 breaches, and it simply defies imagination that could be accidental.’

When it comes to battle on land, 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 defence.

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 percent by 2050 – to slow climate change, promote biodiversity, and now, ready border nations for potential war with Russia.

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 defence 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 defence, 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 defence-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 per cent 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.

Britain could send fighter jets to bolster NATO’s air defence over Poland after Russian drones were shot down over the eastern European country.

Defence Minister Healey said that 300 UK armed forces personnel are stationed in Poland at the present time, and until July, the UK also had six RAF Typhoon jets over the country, as part of NATO’s air policing responsibilities. Following the drone incursion, he said he asked the Armed Forces ‘to look at options to bolster NATO’s air defence over Poland’.

RAF jets were not involved in shooting down Russian drones in Poland’s airspace, but NATO secretary Rutte has said the Netherlands, Italy, Poland and Germany played a major role.

Speaking at PMQs earlier today, Prime Minister Keir Starmer said: ‘I’ve been in touch with the Polish Prime Minister this morning to make clear our support for Poland, and will stand firm in our support for Ukraine with our partners, and through our leadership of the coalition of the willing, we will continue to ramp up the pressure on Putin until there’s a just and lasting peace.’ 

Shocking images show the devastation inside a Polish home torn apart after being struck by a Russian drone. The roof has been completely destroyed, leaving a gaping hole that exposes the rooms below to the sky.

The owners survived by sheer luck, but had they been inside at the time, their deaths could have triggered NATO’s Article 5 and brought Europe to all-out war.

The collective defence clause treats an attack on one member as an attack on all, raising the terrifying prospect of major conflict.