This article is also available in French and German. President Donald Trump denounced Europe as a “decaying” group of nations led by “weak” people in an interview with POLITICO, belittling the traditional U.S. allies for failing to control migration and end the Russia-Ukraine war, and signaling that he would endorse European political candidates aligned with his own vision for the continent. The broadside attack against European political leadership represents the president’s most virulent denunciation to date of these Western democracies, threatening a decisive rupture with countries like France and Germany that already have deeply strained relations with the Trump administration. “I think they’re weak,” Trump said of Europe’s political leaders. “But I also think that they want to be so politically correct.” “I think they don’t know what to do,” he added. “Europe doesn’t know what to do.” Trump matched that blunt, even abrasive, candor on European affairs with a sequence of stark pronouncements on matters closer to home: He said he would make support for immediately slashing interest rates a litmus test in his choice of a new Federal Reserve chair. He said he could extend anti-drug military operations to Mexico and Colombia. And Trump urged conservative Supreme Court Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, both in their 70s, to stay on the bench. Trump’s comments about Europe come at an especially precarious moment in the negotiations to end Russia’s war in Ukraine, as European leaders express intensifying alarm that Trump may abandon Ukraine and its continental allies to Russian aggression. In the interview, Trump offered no reassurance to Europeans on that score and declared that Russia was obviously in a stronger position than Ukraine. Trump spoke on Monday at the White House with POLITICO’s Dasha Burns for a special episode of The Conversation. POLITICO on Tuesday named Trump the most influential figure shaping European politics in the year ahead, a recognition previously conferred on leaders including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. Trump’s confident commentary on Europe presented a sharp contrast with some of his remarks on domestic matters in the interview. The president and his party have faced a series of electoral setbacks and spiraling dysfunction in Congress this fall as voters rebel against the high cost of living. Trump has struggled to deliver a message to meet that new reality: In the interview, he graded the economy’s performance as an “A-plus-plus-plus-plus-plus,” insisted that prices were falling across the board and declined to outline a specific remedy for imminent spikes in health care premiums. Even amid growing turbulence at home, however, Trump remains a singular figure in international politics. In recent days, European capitals have shuddered with dismay at the release of Trump’s new National Security Strategy document, a highly provocative manifesto that cast the Trump administration in opposition to the mainstream European political establishment and vowed to “cultivate resistance” to the European status quo on immigration and other politically volatile issues. In the interview, Trump amplified that worldview, describing cities like London and Paris as creaking under the burden of migration from the Middle East and Africa. Without a change in border policy, Trump said, some European states “will not be viable countries any longer.” Using highly incendiary language, Trump singled out London’s left-wing mayor, Sadiq Khan, the son of Pakistani immigrants and the city’s first Muslim mayor, as a “disaster” and blamed his election on immigration: “He gets elected because so many people have come in. They vote for him now.” The president of the European Council, António Costa, on Monday rebuked the Trump administration for the national security document and urged the White House to respect Europe’s sovereignty and right to self-government. “Allies do not threaten to interfere in the democratic life or the domestic political choices of these allies,” Costa said. “They respect them.” Speaking with POLITICO, Trump flouted those boundaries and said he would continue to back favorite candidates in European elections, even at the risk of offending local sensitivities. “I’d endorse,” Trump said. “I’ve endorsed people, but I’ve endorsed people that a lot of Europeans don’t like. I’ve endorsed Viktor Orbán,” the hard-right Hungarian prime minister Trump said he admired for his border-control policies. It was the Russia-Ukraine war, rather than electoral politics, that Trump appeared most immediately focused on. He claimed on Monday that he had offered a new draft of a peace plan that some Ukrainian officials liked, but that Zelenskyy himself had not reviewed yet. “It would be nice if he would read it,” Trump said. Zelenskyy met with leaders of France, Germany and the United Kingdom on Monday and continued to voice opposition to ceding Ukrainian territory to Russia as part of a peace deal. The president said he put little stock in the role of European leaders in seeking to end the war: “They talk, but they don’t produce, and the war just keeps going on and on.” In a fresh challenge to Zelenskyy, who appears politically weakened in Ukraine due to a corruption scandal, Trump renewed his call for Ukraine to hold new elections. “They haven’t had an election in a long time,” Trump said. “You know, they talk about a democracy, but it gets to a point where it’s not a democracy anymore.” Latin America Even as he said he is pursuing a peace agenda overseas, Trump said he might further broaden the military actions his administration has taken in Latin America against targets it claims are linked to the drug trade. Trump has deployed a massive military force to the Caribbean to strike alleged drug runners and pressure the authoritarian regime in Venezuela. In the interview, Trump repeatedly declined to rule out putting American troops into Venezuela as part of an effort to bring down the strongman ruler Nicolás Maduro, whom Trump blames for exporting drugs and dangerous people to the United States. Some leaders on the American right have warned Trump that a ground invasion of Venezuela would be a red line for conservatives who voted for him in part to end foreign wars. “I don’t want to rule in or out. I don’t talk about it,” Trump said of deploying ground troops, adding: “I don’t want to talk to you about military strategy.” But the president said he would consider using force against targets in other countries where the drug trade is highly active, including Mexico and Colombia. “Sure, I would,” he said. Trump scarcely defended some of his most controversial actions in Latin America, including his recent pardon of the former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, who was serving a decades-long sentence in an American prison after being convicted in a massive drug-trafficking conspiracy. Trump said he knew “very little” about Hernández except that he’d been told by “very good people” that the former Honduran president had been targeted unfairly by political opponents. “They asked me to do it and I said, I’ll do it,” Trump acknowledged, without naming the people who sought the pardon for Hernández. HEALTH CARE AND THE ECONOMY Asked to grade the economy under his watch, Trump rated it an overwhelming success: “A-plus-plus-plus-plus-plus.” To the extent voters are frustrated about prices, Trump said the Biden administration was at fault: “I inherited a mess. I inherited a total mess.” The president is facing a forbidding political environment because of voters’ struggles with affordability, with about half of voters overall and nearly 4 in 10 people who voted for Trump in 2024 saying in a recent POLITICO Poll that the cost of living was as bad as it had ever been in their lives. Trump said he could make additional changes to tariff policy to help lower the price of some goods, as he has already done, but he insisted overall that the trend on costs was in the right direction. “Prices are all coming down,” Trump said, adding: “Everything is coming down.” Prices rose 3 percent over the 12 months ending in September, according to the most recent Consumer Price Index. Trump’s political struggles are shadowing his upcoming decision on a nominee to chair the Federal Reserve, a post that will shape the economic environment for the balance of Trump’s term. Asked if he was making support for slashing interest rates a litmus test for his Fed nominee, Trump answered with a quick “yes.” The most immediate threat to the cost of living for many Americans is the expiration of enhanced health insurance subsidies for Obamacare exchange plans that were enacted by Democrats under former President Joe Biden and are set to expire at the end of this year. Health insurance premiums are expected to spike in 2026, and medical charities are already experiencing a marked rise in requests for aid even before subsidies expire. Trump has been largely absent from health policy negotiations in Washington, while Democrats and some Republicans supportive of a compromise on subsidies have run into a wall of opposition on the right. Reaching a deal — and marshaling support from enough Republicans to pass it — would likely require direct intervention from the president. Yet asked if he would support a temporary extension of Obamacare subsidies while he works out a large-scale plan with lawmakers, Trump was noncommittal. “I don’t know. I’m gonna have to see,” he said, pivoting to an attack on Democrats for being too generous with insurance companies in the Affordable Care Act. A cloud of uncertainty surrounds the administration’s intentions on health care policy. In late November, the White House planned to unveil a proposal to temporarily extend Obamacare subsidies only to postpone the announcement. Trump has promised on and off for years to unveil a comprehensive plan for replacing Obamacare but has never done so. That did not change in the interview. “I want to give the people better health insurance for less money,” Trump said. “The people will get the money, and they’re going to buy the health insurance that they want.” Reminded that Americans are currently buying holiday gifts and drawing up household budgets for 2026 amid uncertainty around premiums, Trump shot back: “Don’t be dramatic. Don’t be dramatic.” SUPREME COURT Large swaths of Trump’s domestic agenda currently sit before the Supreme Court, with a generally sympathetic 6-3 conservative majority that has nevertheless thrown up some obstacles to the most brazen versions of executive power Trump has attempted to wield. Trump spoke with POLITICO several days after the high court agreed to hear arguments concerning the constitutionality of birthright citizenship, the automatic conferral of citizenship on people born in the United States. Trump is attempting to roll back that right and said it would be “devastating” if the court blocked him from doing so. If the court rules in his favor, Trump said, he had not yet considered whether he would try to strip citizenship from people who were born as citizens under current law. Trump broke with some members of his party who have been hoping that the court’s two oldest conservatives, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, might consider retiring before the midterm elections so that Trump can nominate another conservative while Republicans are guaranteed to control the Senate. The president said he’d rather Alito, 75, and Thomas, 77, the court’s most reliable conservative jurists, remain in place: “I hope they stay,” he said, “’cause I think they’re fantastic.”

France could draft young people with useful skills in case of war, French President Emmanuel Macron said Thursday. In regular times, however, France will set up a voluntary military service that will kick off next summer. “In the event of a major crisis, parliament may decide to call upon not only volunteers, but also those whose skills have been identified during the call-up day, in which case national service would become compulsory,” Macron said at Varces army base in the French Alps. “But apart from this exceptional case, this national service is a service of volunteers who are then selected to meet the needs of our armed forces,” he added. Since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in Ukraine, several European countries have brought back voluntary — and in the case of Latvia and Croatia, mandatory — military service. There are worries that Russia could be ready to attack NATO as soon as 2028, so beefing up understaffed armed forces with trained personnel has become a key priority for many allies. France’s new voluntary scheme, which has been long in the making, will be open mostly to 18- and 19-year-olds. It will be selective — only choosing top candidates — which draws inspiration from Nordic countries including Norway, Macron said. The goal is to enroll 3,000 people next summer, 10,000 in 2030 and 50,000 in 2035. The 10-month training program will be managed entirely by the Armed Forces Ministry. The section process starts in January and the military will choose the most-motivated candidates who meet the requirements. Volunteers will be given a uniform, military equipment and compensation — although Macron didn’t say how much they would be paid. Volunteers will only serve on French soil, the president stressed, responding to concerns that youngsters participating in the scheme could be sent to NATO’s eastern flank or Ukraine. Macron pushed back against reinstating mandatory military service for everyone — an idea floated by some political parties including the far-right National Rally. Drafting an entire age group doesn’t match “the needs of our armed forces or the threats we face,” he said. An Elysée official conceded earlier this week that France simply couldn’t afford it. “We cannot return to the days of conscription, but we need mobilization: mobilization of the nation to defend itself, not against any particular enemy, but to be ready and to be respected,” Macron said.

BRUSSELS — The European Commission on Thursday unveiled its Defense Readiness Roadmap to prepare the bloc to “credibly deter its adversaries and respond to any aggression” by 2030.  According to the document, within five years the EU must be able to respond to the “evolving threat landscape” it faces, particularly from Russia, which “poses a persistent threat to European security for the foreseeable future.” “The recent threats have shown that Europe is at risk. We have to protect every citizen and square centimeter of our territory,” said Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. The Commission outlined four flagship projects in the roadmap, as well as boosting the bloc’s military industrial complex while continuing to support Ukraine, which is considered an “integral part of Europe’s defense and security architecture.” Von der Leyen will present the roadmap to EU leaders at their Oct. 23 summit. The four key defense efforts in the roadmap are: the European Drone Defense Initiative; the Eastern Flank Watch; the European Air Shield; and the European Space Shield. The idea is for the Commission to help members coordinate on projects that are too large for a single country to do on its own, while being mindful of the need to preserve national sovereignty over defense. Each flagship project, with a timeline outlined in the paper, will be led by a member state, supported by the Commission, and will address capability gaps without creating an operational structure.  “The roadmap has clear objectives and deadlines for how we will achieve them. It’s up to the member states; they are in the driver’s seat. But it helps them fill the gaps and fulfill the tasks set by NATO,” said Kaja Kallas, the bloc’s top diplomat. The Commission said the flagship programs are driven by requests from the member states. “Frontline countries feel the sense of urgency and want to prepare after we saw the drone incursions in Europe,” said a Commission official prior to presenting the plans, referring to recent overflights of EU territory by Russian drones.  “This clearly shows that Europe needs a 360-degree approach to rapidly closing capability gaps in this area. Ukraine is ready to support member states in organizing this,” the official added. The Commission is in close dialogue with NATO to coordinate further steps, and more flagship projects are anticipated.  “Two more initiatives will be announced later this year: a Military Mobility Package and a Technological Transformation of the Defence Industry,” said Commission Vice President Henna Virkkunen. Kallas said the first coordinating meetings of the four groups started this week. “The first meeting of the drones coalition took place with the Netherlands and Latvia in the lead,” she said.  German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius earlier Thursday announced that Germany intends to take the lead in the European Air Shield. A Commission official said groups of at least 10 countries are aligned for each of the four efforts. The European Defence Agency is also playing a central role by providing meeting spaces for the groups and advising on projects. 

Listen on * Spotify * Apple Music * Amazon Music Gordon Repinski im Gespräch mit Sicherheitsexperte Carlo Masala. Masala rechnet mit der Diplomatie der letzten Wochen ab: Den Friedensprozess, den US-Präsident Trump sehen wollte, hat es nie gegeben – weil Putin nie mitgespielt hat. Der Professor an der Universität der Bundeswehr in München analysiert die militärische Lage an der Front, warum Investitionen in die ukrainische Rüstungsindustrie jetzt wichtiger sind als westliche Waffen und wie viele tausend Soldaten Europa in der Ukraine für einen echten Frieden bräuchte. Carlo Masala erklärt zudem, warum kein deutscher Politiker bereit ist, über den Einsatz von Bodentruppen zur Friedenssicherung zu sprechen und welche fatale Signalwirkung das für die NATO hat. Mehr Analysen von Carlo Masala hört ihr in seinem Podcast „Sicherheitshalber“ und lest ihr in seinem Buch „Wenn Russland gewinnt“. Das Berlin Playbook als Podcast gibt es jeden Morgen ab 5 Uhr. Gordon Repinski und das POLITICO-Team liefern Politik zum Hören – kompakt, international, hintergründig. Für alle Hauptstadt-Profis: Der Berlin Playbook-Newsletter bietet jeden Morgen die wichtigsten Themen und Einordnungen. Jetzt kostenlos abonnieren. Mehr von Host und POLITICO Executive Editor Gordon Repinski: Instagram: @gordon.repinski | X: @GordonRepinski.

Listen on * Spotify * Apple Music * Amazon Music Markus Söder will Helgoland für Bayern – und besucht die Insel ohne seinen CDU-Kollegen aus Schleswig-Holstein. Gordon Repinski analysiert das gefährliche Polit-Spiel des CSU-Chefs, seine Parallelen zu Donald Trump und warum Söder für Kanzler Merz zum ätzenden Problem wird. Im 200-Sekunden-Interview: Thomas Erndl. Der verteidigungspolitische Sprecher der Unions-Fraktion über den Streit mit der SPD um die Wehrpflicht und wie die Union den Aufwuchs der Bundeswehr sichern will. Außerdem: Tausende Euro für Make-up und Haare. Wir blicken auf die Ausgaben der Minister für ihr Aussehen – und wer dabei am tiefsten in die Steuerkasse greift. Das Berlin Playbook als Podcast gibt es jeden Morgen ab 5 Uhr. Gordon Repinski und das POLITICO-Team liefern Politik zum Hören – kompakt, international, hintergründig. Für alle Hauptstadt-Profis: Der Berlin Playbook-Newsletter bietet jeden Morgen die wichtigsten Themen und Einordnungen. Jetzt kostenlos abonnieren. Mehr von Host und POLITICO Executive Editor Gordon Repinski: Instagram: @gordon.repinski | X: @GordonRepinski.

In February 2022, as Russia marched on Kyiv, Oleksandr Dmitriev realized he knew how to stop Moscow’s men: Blow a hole in the dam that strangled the Irpin River northeast of the capital and restore the long-lost boggy floodplain. A defense consultant who organized offroad races in the area before the war, Dmitriev was familiar with the terrain. He knew exactly what reflooding the river basin — a vast expanse of bogs and marshes that was drained in Soviet times — would do to Russia’s war machinery.  “It turns into an impassable turd, as the jeep guys say,” he said. He told the commander in charge of Kyiv’s defense as much, and was given the go-ahead to blow up the dam.  Dmitriev’s idea worked. “In principle, it stopped the Russian attack from the north,” he said. The images of Moscow’s tanks mired in mud went around the world.  Three years later, this act of desperation is inspiring countries along NATO’s eastern flank to look into restoring their own bogs — fusing two European priorities that increasingly compete for attention and funding: defense and climate.  That’s because the idea isn’t only to prepare for a potential Russian attack. The European Union’s efforts to fight global warming rely in part on nature’s help, and peat-rich bogs capture planet-warming carbon dioxide just as well as they sink enemy tanks.  Yet half of the EU’s bogs are being sapped of their water to create land suitable for planting crops. The desiccated peatlands in turn release greenhouse gases and allow heavy vehicles to cross with ease.  Some European governments are now wondering if reviving ailing bogs can solve several problems at once. Finland and Poland told POLITICO they were actively exploring bog restoration as a multi-purpose measure to defend their borders and fight climate change.  Poland’s massive 10 billion złoty (€2.3 billion) Eastern Shield border fortification project, launched last year, “provides for environmental protection, including by … peatland formation and forestation of border areas,” the country’s defense ministry said in a statement.  “It’s a win-win situation that achieves many targets at the same time,” said Tarja Haaranen, director general for nature at Finland’s environment ministry.  BOGS! WHAT ARE THEY GOOD FOR?  In their pristine state, bogs are carpeted with delicate mosses that can’t fully decompose in their waterlogged habitats and slowly turn into soft, carbon-rich soil known as peat.  This is what makes them Earth’s most effective repositories of CO2. Although they cover only 3 percent of the planet, they lock away a third of the world’s carbon — twice the amount stored in forests.  Yet when drained, bogs start releasing the carbon they stored for hundreds or thousands of years, fueling global warming.  Some 12 percent of peatlands worldwide are degraded, producing 4 percent of planet-warming pollution. (To compare, global aviation is responsible for around 2.5 percent.) In Europe, where bogs were long regarded as unproductive terrain to be converted into farmland, the picture is especially dramatic: Half of the EU’s peatlands are degraded, mostly due to drainage for agricultural purposes. As a result, 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.  Various peatland restoration projects are now underway, with bog repair having gained momentum under the EU’s new Nature Restoration Law, which requires countries to revive 30 percent of degraded peatlands by 2030 and 50 percent by 2050.  The bloc’s 27 governments now have until September 2026 to draft plans on how they intend to meet these targets.  On NATO’s eastern flank, restoring bogs would be a relatively cheap and straightforward measure to achieve EU nature targets and defense goals all at once, scientists argue.  “It’s definitely doable,” said Aveliina Helm, professor of restoration ecology at the University of Tartu, who until recently advised Estonia’s government on its EU nature repair strategy. “We are right now in the development of our national restoration plan, as many EU countries are,” she added, “and as part of that I see great potential to join those two objectives.”  NATO’S BOG BELT  As it happens, most of the EU’s peatlands are concentrated on NATO’s border with Russia and Kremlin-allied Belarus — stretching from the Finnish Arctic through the Baltic states, past Lithuania’s hard-to-defend Suwałki Gap and into eastern Poland.  When waterlogged, this terrain represents a dangerous trap for military trucks and tanks. In a tragic example earlier this year, four U.S. soldiers stationed in Lithuania died when they drove their 63-ton M88 Hercules armored vehicle into a bog.  And when armies can’t cross soggy open land, they are forced into areas that are more easily defended, as Russia found out when Dmitriev and his soldiers blew up the dam north of Kyiv in February 2022.  A destroyed Russian tank sits in a field on April 28, 2022 in Moshchun, Ukraine. | Taras Podolian/Gazeta.ua/Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images “The Russians there in armored personnel carriers got stuck at the entrance, then they were killed with a Javelin [anti-tank missile], then when the Russians tried to build pontoons … ours shot them with artillery,” Dmitriev recounted.  Bog-based defense isn’t a new idea. Waterlogged terrain has stopped troops throughout European history — from Germanic tribes inflicting defeat on Roman legions by trapping them beside a bog in 9 AD, to Finland’s borderlands ensnaring the Soviets in the 1940s. The treacherous marshes north of Kyiv posed a formidable challenge to armies in both world wars.  Strategically rewetting drained peatlands to prepare for an enemy attack, however, would be a novelty. But it’s an idea that’s starting to catch on — among environmentalists, defense strategists and politicians.  Pauli Aalto-Setälä, a lawmaker with Finland’s governing National Coalition Party, last year filed a parliamentary motion calling on the Finnish government to restore peatlands to secure its borders and fight climate change.  “In Finland, we have used our nature from a defense angle in history,” said Aalto-Setälä, who holds the rank of major and trained as a tank officer during his national service. “I realized that at the eastern border especially, there are a lot of excellent areas to restore — for the climate, but also to make it as difficult to go through as possible.”  The Finnish defense and environment ministries will now start talks in the fall on whether to launch a bog-repair pilot project, according to Haaranen, who will lead the working group. “I’m personally very excited about this.” POLAND’S PEATY POLITICS Discussions on defensive nature restoration are advancing fastest in Poland — even though Warsaw is usually reluctant to scale up climate action.  Climate activists and scientists started campaigning for nature-based defense a few years ago when they realized that Poland’s politicians were far more likely to spend financial and political capital on environmental efforts when they were linked to national security.  “Once you talk about security, everyone listens right now in Poland,” said Wiktoria Jędroszkowiak, a Polish activist who helped initiate the country’s Fridays for Future climate protests. “And our peatlands and ancient forests, they are the places that are going to be very important for our defense once the war gets to Poland as well.”  After years of campaigning, the issue has now reached government level in Warsaw, with discussions underway between scientists and Poland’s defense and environment ministries.  Wiktor Kotowski, an ecologist and member of the Polish government’s advisory council for nature conservation, said initial talks with the defense ministry have been promising.  “There were a lot of misunderstandings and misconceptions but in general we found there are only synergies,” he said. Damaged Russian vehicle marked V by Russian troops and then re-marked UA by Ukrainians bogged down in the mud on April 8, 2022 in Moshchun, Ukraine. | Serhii Mykhalchuk/Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images “What the ministry of defense wants is to get back as many wetlands as possible along the eastern border,” Kotowski added. “And that is what is required from the point of view of nature restoration and climate as well.”  Cezary Tomczyk, a state secretary at Poland’s defense ministry, agreed. “Our objectives align,” he said. “For us, nature is an ally, and we want to use it.”  JUST … DON’T DRAIN THE SWAMP  Governments in the Baltics have shown little interest so far. Only Lithuania’s environment ministry said that defense-linked wetland restoration “is currently under discussion,” declining to offer further details.  Estonia’s defense ministry and Latvia’s armed forces said that new Baltic Defence Line plans to fortify the three countries’ borders would make use of natural obstacles including bogs, but did not involve peatland restoration.  Yet scientists see plenty of potential, given that peatlands cover 10 percent of the Baltics. And in many cases, the work would be straightforward, said Helm, the Estonian ecologist.  “We have a lot of wetlands that are drained but still there. If we now restore the water regime — we close the ditches that constantly drain them and make them emit carbon — then they are relatively easy to return to a more natural state,” she said.  Healthy peatlands serve as havens for wildlife: Frogs, snails, dragonflies and specialized plant species thrive in the austere conditions of bogs, while rare birds stop by to nest. They also act as barriers to droughts and wildfires, boosting Europe’s resilience to climate change.  The return of this flora and fauna takes time. But ending drainage not only puts a fast stop to pollution — it also instantly renders the terrain impassable. As long as the land isn’t completely drained, “it’s one or two years and you have the wetland full of water,” said Kotowski, the Polish ecologist. “Restoration is a difficult process from an ecological point of view, but for water retention, for stopping emissions and for difficulty to cross — so for defensive purposes — it’s pretty straightforward and fast.”  And at a time when Europe’s focus has shifted to security, with defense budgets surging and in some cases diverting money from the green transition, environmentalists hope that military involvement could unlock unprecedented funding and speed up nature restoration.  “At the moment, it takes five years to obtain approval for peatland rewetting, and sometimes it can take 10 years,” said Franziska Tanneberger, director of Germany’s Greifswald Mire Centre, a leading European peatlands research institute. “When it comes to military activities, there is a certain prioritization. You can’t wait 10 years if we need it for defense.”  THE TRACTOR FACTOR  But that doesn’t mean there’s no resistance to the idea.  A Russian tank seized inside of the woodland is examined by Ukrainian soldiers in Irpin, Ukraine on April 01, 2022. | Metin Aktas/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images In Estonia, the environment ministry halted one peatland restoration effort earlier this year amid fierce opposition from locals who worried that rewetting would lead to flooding and forest destruction. Scientists described such concerns as unfounded.  The biggest threat to peatlands is agriculture — an awkward reality for EU governments desperate to avoid drawing the ire of farmers.  In both Finland and Poland, any initial defensive restoration projects are likely to focus on state-owned land, sidestepping this conflict for now. But scientists argue that if countries are serious about large-scale bog repair, they have to talk to farmers. “This will not work without involving agricultural lands,” said Kotowski, the Polish ecologist. A whopping 85 percent of the country’s peatlands are degraded, in most cases because they have been drained to plant crops where water once pooled.  “What we badly need is a program for farmers, to compensate them for rewetting these drained peatlands — and not only compensate, to let them earn money from it,” he added.   There are plants that can be harvested from restored peatlands, such as reeds for use in construction or packaging. Yet for now, the market for such crops in Europe is too small to incentivize farmers to switch.  The bogs-for-defense argument also doesn’t work for all countries. In Germany, where more than 90 percent of peatlands are drained, the Bundeswehr sounded reluctant when asked about the idea.  “The rewetting of wetlands can be both advantageous and disadvantageous for [NATO’s] own operations,” depending on the individual country, a spokesperson for the Bundeswehr’s infrastructure and environment office said.  NATO troops would need to move through Germany in the event of a Russian attack in the east, and bogs restrict military movements. Still, “the idea of increasing the obstacle value of terrain by causing flooding and swamping … has been used in warfare for a very long time and is still a viable option today,” the spokesperson said.  BOGGING DOWN PUTIN Scientists are quick to acknowledge that a bogs-for-security approach can’t solve everything.  “Of course we still need traditional defense. This isn’t meant to replace that,” said Tanneberger, who also advises a company that recently drew up a detailed proposal for defense-linked peatland restoration.  Bogs can’t stop drones or shoot down missiles, and war isn’t good for nature — or conservation efforts.  Soldiers of the “Bratstvo” (Brotherhood) battalion under the command of the 10th Mountain Assault Brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine sit on the muzzle of a captured Russian tank stuck in a field on April 2, 2022 in Nova Basan Village, Chernihiv Oblast, Ukraine. | Andrii Kotliarchuk/Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images And in Ukraine, the flooding of the Irpin basin was economically and ecologically destructive.  Among outside observers, there was initial excitement about the prospect of a new natural paradise. But villagers in the region lost their lands and homes, and the influx of water had a negative effect on local species that had no time to adapt to the sudden change.  “Yes, it stopped the invasion of Kyiv, and this was badly needed, so no criticism here. But it did result in environmental damage,” said Helm, the Estonian ecologist.  Unlike Ukraine, EU governments have the chance to restore peatlands with care, taking into account the needs of nature, farmers and armies.  “Perhaps it’s better to think ahead instead of being forced to act in a hurry,” she said. “We have this opportunity. Ukraine didn’t.”  Zia Weise reported from Brussels, Wojciech Kość from Warsaw and Veronika Melkozerova from Kyiv. 

KYIV — Russia’s changing attack tactics are forcing Ukraine to adapt by making shorter defense lines and building low-rise strongpoints less visible to drones swarming the skies. But the revamp is undermined by a chaotic approach to fortifying front lines, with very different approaches being used depending on local commanders. Tougher defense positions are also made much less effective by Ukraine’s chronic shortage of combat troops. The change in fortification strategy is being driven by Russia dropping large formation attacks supported by armored vehicles in favor of much smaller units backed by drones, Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov said last week. Ukraine is responding by building fortifications for ever smaller units — from battalions of about 500 troops to companies of about 100, and now for platoons of 20 to 50 soldiers. “Now we see that the most effective position is a maximum of one detachment. And these are mainly groups of trenches, even so-called foxholes, which make it impossible for the enemy to use strike drones. After all, now a drone, especially on fiber optics, can penetrate any hole,” Ukrainian Army Commander in Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi told journalists in Kyiv at the end of June. Previously, strong points used extensive trench networks from 2 to 5 kilometers in length. The new system uses smaller strongpoints with trench networks 60 to 70 meters long and equipped with mandatory anti-drone cover.  “These are harder to detect and are effective in carrying out tasks of defense, deterrence, and delivering firepower, including against FPV drones,” Umerov said. Behind that frontline defense, Ukraine is continuing to build two additional lines that include concrete tetrahedrons, also called dragon’s teeth, to hold off armored vehicles, minefields, foxholes, wooden and concrete trenches, anti-drone covers and nets. “Fortification is not just about concrete and trenches — it is an adaptive engineering system that takes the enemy’s tactics into account and always serves one purpose: protecting our warriors. We monitor the process daily and reinforce the areas where it’s needed most,” Umerov said. Earlier, fortifications were often built in open terrain to block Russian attacks using large numbers of armored vehicles. Now, they are built around forest belts, which have better camouflage. WHO BUILDS WHAT The top command insists the military is doing a good job of building fortifications. The vast majority of assigned plans were completed last year and over half of those planned for this year are already done, Umerov said. But the view from the front lines is a lot more critical, according to analysts and soldiers who spoke to POLITICO. In Dnipro, a city in central Ukraine where there’s synergy between the military, local governments and other bodies, acting together to help with money, tools and resources, three lines of defense were built solidly and rapidly to hold back Russia’s push from the Donetsk region. But the situation is a lot patchier in northeastern Ukraine where Russia is now staging a major offensive. “What is happening in Sumy and Kharkiv regions is a mess. Hardly anybody knows who is responsible for what, and who is supposed to control the process,” said Roman Pohorilyi, co-founder of DeepState, a Ukrainian OSINT group that has created an online map of Russia’s war against Ukraine. He added that the latest Russian offensive has pushed Ukrainian authorities finally to speed up construction.   “We always wait until the very last moment,” he said. He also criticized the county’s haphazard approach to fortifying front lines in the crucial zone around the northeastern region of Sumy. “In Sumy’s Yunakivka village, for example, we saw mountains of dragon’s teeth just left there. In some places, there are trenches, but then nothing in a forest area, where they should be, and then trenches again. I would slap the hands of those responsible for this approach,” Pohorilyi said. The Ukrainian Defense Ministry has oversight of all fortifications, but several different entities are responsible for building and maintaining them, depending on the defense line: the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the State Special Transport Service of the Defense Ministry, and local military and civilian administrations. Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said in January that last year the government spent 46.2 billion hryvnia (€930 million) to build 3,000 defensive points “in threatening directions and in places where active hostilities are not currently taking place.” The most dangerous work is done by combat troops. “Ukrainian servicemen still have to dig the first line of trenches with shovels and during active fighting,” Syrskyi said. TROOP SHORTAGE However, any kind of fortified structure is only effective if it’s occupied by a sufficient number of troops, Syrskyi said. Despite mobilization efforts, Kyiv is still outnumbered on the 1,200-km front line by Russia. “If there are no servicemen in the fortification or their number is insufficient — for example, when a normal strongpoint is built, but two or three soldiers remain in it — of course, this fortification does not play its role,” Syrskyi said. Russian soldiers are searching for weak spots in Ukraine’s defenses, according to two soldiers, who spoke to POLITICO on condition of anonymity to be able to talk freely.  “It all depends on the commander. If he orders to dig and mine, the area will be solidly fortified. If [Russians] see your unit dug in well, they attack your neighboring units,” one soldier said. Pohorilyi confirmed the Russian technique. “Russians push everywhere, probe for weak and problematic places, they know all of them. And as soon as they find these places, they immediately concentrate their resources and troops there and start piercing,” he said. “And that’s when our defenses start collapsing, unfortunately.” DISGRUNTLED TROOPS Soldiers also complain that the military is not properly using battlefield gains to build trenches and other barriers to stop Russian counterattacks. Ukrainian soldiers spent six months inside Russia’s Kursk region holding off more than 60,000 Russian troops, preventing them from advancing into the Sumy region. They argue they won plenty of time for authorities to construct proper fortifications in the border zone. “We gave time to prepare the border area for the Russian attack. But they hardly used it with 100 percent efficiency. Protective nets from FPV drones over the main supply roads began to be installed only in January, while they were already under regular Russian drone attacks,” said Ukrainian soldier Artem Kariakin. “As a result, the route, which from August to December 2024 could be completely and safely covered with nets, was turned into a road of life, along which our weapons systems could pass without damage with a 30 to 70 percent chance not in our favor,” Kariakin added. He said that local authorities and military units only started digging dugouts in the border area and installing the first dragon’s teeth once Ukrainian forces were retreating from Kursk. “As a result, by the time many dugouts were finished, the Russians were already much closer, and many positions lost their relevance. I believe that the people responsible for the fortifications lost a huge amount of time and ultimately failed their task. The work was carried out, but with great and extremely illogical delays,” Kariakin said. Only in June, Russian troops occupied 500 square kilometers of Ukrainian land, DeepState reported, the fastest pace of advance in many months.