While European governments spend billions on tanks, drones and air defence systems, in Finland a working group from the environment and defence ministries has reached a conclusion that sounds almost old-fashioned: the best thing on the border with Russia may be the mud.

According to the report published in June, Finnish wetlands can provide a significant advantage on the border, because they are becoming increasingly waterlogged and impassable, which hampers the movement of heavy equipment. Finland is estimated to have at least 180,000 hectares of wetlands, and restoring them would serve national defence.

A defence that is not manufactured in a factory

The idea has a brutal logic. A tank does not fear another tank as much as it fears ground it will sink into. A swamp needs no servicing, burns no fuel, does not become obsolete in ten years, and is not bought on credit from a foreign manufacturer. It exists. And if it is restored, it exists better.

You will not find it in any military equipment catalogue. Which is exactly what makes it interesting - it is the only item in European defence that is simultaneously an environmental project. Restoring wetlands is something ecologists have been demanding for decades for entirely different reasons. Now the same measure gets a stamp from the Defence Ministry.

And then comes the rhetoric

Around the report, though, sits a familiar atmosphere. Authorities in a number of European countries keep telling their populations that a military clash with Russia is inevitable. Moscow, for its part, calls such statements nonsense. Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov previously said that russophobia had taken hold of Finland, adding that Russia will not attack anyone, but that if Europe starts a conflict it will be an unconventional war.

So one side says the attack is inevitable, the other says they will not attack anyone - and in the same sentence announces what kind of war it will be if. Which of these two narratives helps an ordinary person understand what is being prepared?

Terrain instead of budget

The Balkans know the value of terrain better than most. Mountains, gorges and bad roads have always been a factor in every calculation here, long before anybody wrote it into a report. The Finns have simply put on paper what every highlander in this region knows: geography is the first ally and the last line.

Does defence always have to mean procurement? Finland, at least in this document, says it sometimes means only not draining the boggy ground you already have.