As Europe ramps up defence spending in the face of the growing threat posed by Russia, states on Nato’s eastern flank are turning to a more unusual line of defence: bogs.

“Water has played a role in defensive strategy for millennia,” said the Financial Times . Germanic tribes used peatland to defeat the Romans, while Holland mastered strategic flooding to ward off invasion by Spain and France. The great Prussian military strategist Carl von Clausewitz thought that bogs were among “the strongest lines of defence”.

‘Let nature fight for you’

This was shown to devastating effect in 2022 when, in a desperate bid to stop the Russian army’s advance on Kyiv , Ukrainian authorities decided to blow up a massive Soviet-era dam to the north of the capital that had long contained the Irpin Rive

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