Throwing nature into the fray

How the environment is used as a weapon

Politico has published a piece in which officials from Poland and Finland say they intend to restore previously drained marshes on their eastern borders as part of a military programme. Similar plans are being considered in the Baltic States. The politicians claim to be drawing on the Ukrainian experience of spring 2022 battles north of Kiev and are trying to present potential future swamp formation as a breakthrough in battlefield strategy. We already know how some of our neighbours show care for the environment by erecting border fences — an act scientists say causes irreparable damage to nature. Now let’s see how nature is being used in war.

Tanks fear no mud

The military-political leaders of Finland, Poland and the Baltic States — in their zeal to turn borderlands into an impenetrable bog — are inspired by the Ukrainians who, on February 26th, 2022, two days after the start of the special military operation, blew up the Kozarovichy dam on the Irpin River in an attempt to halt the advance of Russian troops. The consequence was the flooding of 2,842 hectares of land within the Kiev water reservoir. Analysts note that this event may have shifted the trajectory of military advances somewhat. But in return for its tactical undermining, Ukraine got a vast region contaminated by chemicals from flooded fields, industrial and human waste due to the destroyed sewage system.
True, it is harder for large contingents of infantry and heavy equipment to move across boggy terrain than across dry plains. Yet, hard does not mean impossible. After all, there was the strategic offensive Operation Bagration, in which in the summer of 1944 the Red Army completely freed the territory of the Byelorussian SSR, and the German Army Group Centre was defeated. During the advance, Soviet forces had to overcome numerous water barriers as well as swampy stretches.
For German Nazis, the blow on the Byelorussian front came as a total surprise. The German command was swayed by a large Soviet disinformation campaign conducted before the offensive, further aided by the fact that information relayed by Soviet intelligence corresponded to German notions of military art. It dictated that the Red Army should advance through Ukraine, with its open steppes well-suited to tanks, rather than through forests and swamps in Belarus.

Terror flood

Hydrotechnical warfare techniques can serve as instruments of terror. In such cases, the victims are usually not only and not so much enemy combatants but civilian population. A quintessential example of such an atrocity from the Great Patriotic War of 1941–1945 is the flooding of Berlin’s subway on May 2nd, 1945.  

Eight decades on, a similar crime was repeated. The destruction of the Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant by the Ukrainian army took place on the night of June 6th, 2023. 

The West and the Kiev regime immediately blamed Russia for organising the catastrophe, which flooded 28 settlements, killed at least 52 people and inflicted irreparable damage to the region’s ecology, but did not even trouble to manufacture evidence properly. Meanwhile, the motive lay with the Ukrainian side, which had begun its widely publicised counter-offensive two days earlier. The dam destruction was intended to divert the Russian army from the main strike direction of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and create a ‘dead zone’ on the bank of the Dnieper River they held.
However, the Ukrainian counter-offensive stalled in the steppe of Zaporozhye, while the memories of the ecological disaster’s consequences will remain for years to come. As a result, the once-famous Kakhovka reservoir disappeared, substantial damage was done to the surrounding water system, dozens of species either vanished or declined to critically low levels. Furthermore, the hydrothermal regime was completely altered, making farming hundreds of kilometres around the former reservoir far more risky than before. In 2025, a changing microclimate led to a locust plague that ravaged Ukraine’s southern regions.

Across the ages

Luring the enemy into the swamp or washing them away with a sudden torrent, damming a nearby river or, conversely, opening the gates wide is a tactic that has come down to us from the depths of history. By the 20th century, with growing technical capabilities, the scale of environmental disasters and their impact on warfare began to increase. Thus, in the summer to autumn of 1917, during the Battle of Passchendaele, British and Canadian troops literally drowned in nightmare mud due to the destruction of irrigation structures by German artillery, a breach of hydrological regimes compounded by heavy rains typical of Flanders. During the subsequent Second World War, on May 17th, 1943, the 617th Squadron of the British Royal Air Force, led by Wing Commander Guy Gibson, destroyed the Möhne and Eder dams, causing flooding of part of the Ruhr valley with its villages, mines, military plants and airfields.
With the development of technology in the latter half of the 20th century, the question arose of what to do when one wants to ‘wash away’ the enemy from the face of the earth, yet there are no large bodies of water nearby. The answer came from Americans during the Vietnam War. From 1967 to 1972, transport aircraft C-130s and F-4 fighters, during the monsoon season from March to November, sprayed silver iodide into clouds above Vietnam. Over five years, 5,400 tonnes of reagent were used, tripling precipitation relative to the long-term norm.

The operation — nicknamed ‘Popeye’ after the popular cartoon character — led to massive floods that claimed thousands of lives, and landslides that buried rice fields beneath metres of mud.

Besides Vietnam — of which ten percent of the territory ended up under water — neighbouring Laos was affected as well. Independent tallies put the death toll from this brutal interference with nature at over 100,000 people. 

EXPERT OPINION

Road to the quagmire

The actions of Lithuania, Latvia and Poland in creating artificial barriers on the border with Belarus are overtly performative. Their aim is to derive unilateral benefit from the current geopolitical realignment, using it as a tool to gain their own political dividends.
These states resort to the most elaborate demonstrations of their supposed ‘prowess’ in their confrontation with allegedly ‘militaristic’ Belarus. A recently voiced pledge to swamp borderlands to counter imaginary threats is puzzling, to say the least. This initiative looks particularly cynical against the backdrop of the recent incident in which Lithuanian troops failed to rescue the crew of a NATO armoured vehicle stuck in local marshland.
While Belarus consistently advocates for reciprocal respect and mutually beneficial co-operation with its neighbours, politicians from some neighbouring countries have chosen to indulge in rhetoric that is useless for their people. Instead of developing the agricultural sector and producing world-demanded goods, they are virtually ready to ‘swamp’ the economic and political future of their countries. Moreover, all this is set to be done without comprehensive expert assessment or discussion.
Such approaches starkly illustrate the degradation of EU politics, which is sinking deeper into the quagmire of confrontation, dragging European society into the bog, so to speak.
Sergei Klishevich, member of the Standing Commission on Education, Culture and Science of the House of Representatives of Belarus’ National Assembly of eighth convocation 

By Anton Popov