A new wargame simulating a Russian incursion into Lithuania, carried out by ex-Nato and German officials, concluded that Moscow would “achieve most of its goals” within days.
The exercise envisaged a scenario where the Kremlin used bogus claims of a “humanitarian crisis” in the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad to seize the Lithuanian city of Marijampole to its east, a key conurbation through which the road linking Russia and Belarus runs.
The scenario, which plays out in October 2026, suggests that an absence of US leadership and hesitancy from Nato countries could allow Moscow to gain total control over the Baltic within days, using an initial force of only 15,000 troops.
“The Russians achieved most of their goals without moving many of their own units,” Bartłomiej Kot, a Polish security analyst who acted as the Polish prime minister, told The Wall Street Journal. “What this showed to me is that once we are confronted by the escalatory narrative from the Russian side, we have it embedded in our thinking that we are the ones who should be de-escalating.”
Marijampole hosts a critical road intersection in Europe. The EU and Ukraine use the Via Baltica highway to Poland, running southwest. Running east to west is a road which links Belarus and Kaliningrad, which Lithuania is obliged to keep open to Russian traffic under a treaty.
In the wargame, Russia portrayed the invasion of Marijampole as a humanitarian mission. The US declined to invoke Nato’s Article 5, which stipulates that all members must come to the defence of another member state which comes under attack.
Germany was hesitant in its response to the attack, and a brigade already deployed in Lithuania did not intervene after Russia used drones to lay mines near a military base, the wargame forecast. Poland, meanwhile, mobilised, but ultimately did not send troops into Lithuania to help defend its territory.
Franz-Stefan Gady, a Vienna-based military analyst, took on the role of the Russian chief of general staff in the game. “Deterrence depends not only on capabilities, but on what the enemy believes about our will, and in the wargame my ‘Russian colleagues’ and I knew: Germany will hesitate. And this was enough to win,” he said.
The game was carried out amid growing fears in Europe of a Russian attack on Nato. Last year saw repeated incursions of Russian drones and fighter jets into Nato territory, as Moscow prodded at the alliance’s defences, a move experts and officials say was designed to expose how the countries would react.
Netherlands defence minister Ruben Brekelmans told the WSJ that it had assessed that “Russia will be able to move large amounts of troops within one year”, adding: “We see that they are already increasing their strategic inventories, and are expanding their presence and assets along the Nato borders.”
The wargame exercise was carried out in December jointly by German newspaper Die Welt and the German Wargaming Centre of the Helmut Schmidt University of the German Armed Forces.
