India, Dec. 21 -- By any historical measure, the phrase "iron curtain" sends a shiver down the spine. When Winston Churchill used it in 1946, he was describing a continent divided by ideology, military power and fear, stretching "from Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic".

Nearly eight decades later, the metaphor has returned to European political language, but today the curtain is being raised not by Moscow but by Europe itself, this time to keep Russia out. Across the continent's eastern edge countries bordering Russia and its puppet ally Belarus are racing to fortify their frontiers. Fences, walls, bunkers, ditches, minefields and drones are appearing along hundreds of miles of borderland. From the Arctic north to the plai...