Dutch military tests camp design for Russian war prisoners in Marnehuizen
The Dutch Army is testing a new prisoner-of-war camp design this week in Marnehuizen, preparing for the possibility of holding up to 2,000 captured Russian soldiers in the event of a large-scale conflict, Dutch newspaper AD reports. It is the first time in more than 30 years that the Netherlands has conducted training focused on detention at this scale.
The exercise is part of a broader shift in military planning, as scenarios involving mass captures of enemy troops are again being treated as plausible. The temporary facility in the Groningen training area is intended to demonstrate how large numbers of detainees could be processed and held far from the front line.
Brigadier General Nicole de Wolf, commander of the Operational Support Command of the Army, said the goal is not to recreate older models of detention facilities.
The design differs significantly from traditional images of prisoner-of-war camps. Instead of manned watchtowers, the site is monitored using tall poles equipped with advanced cameras. A drone can also be deployed overhead to transmit live video feeds to a central command post.
Inside the camp, detainees are housed in small white barracks and sleep in bunk beds. Officers and enlisted personnel are not separated and are accommodated in mixed groups of around 20 people per unit. Each unit includes its own outdoor yard, along with shared shower facilities, a dining area, and a medical post. Personal belongings such as mobile phones must be surrendered, though detainees are permitted to send letters home. “They can expect accommodation that is at least as ‘comfortable’ as that in which our own troops live,” said Brigadier General Nicole de Wolf, commander of the Operational Support Command of the Army.
De Wolf said planners reviewed Cold War-era concepts not to replicate them, but to recover operational understanding of what such facilities require.
“We did not use those old designs to copy them literally, but to retrieve knowledge about what such a camp must actually meet,” she said.
