War Game Claims NATO Could Be Outpaced in Baltics

A former Russian war-game participant says a conventional push—bolstered by speed, early ground seizure, and implied nuclear threats—could overwhelm German and wider NATO decision-making in the first 48 hours, especially if the United States holds back.

When Russian troops move first, the deciding battles in the Baltics may not be fought with tanks alone, the war-game participant said. It would be fought in capitals—where, he argues, hesitation could be just as decisive as firepower.

The account comes from a December 2025 exercise at a German military college in Hamburg. where the role of Russia’s chief of the general staff was played by a “Red Team” participant who says NATO’s eastern flank can be broken through a fast political and military fait accompli—without directly drawing in Americans.

The scenario was steeped in the same post–Ukraine ceasefire logic that has increasingly shaped European security debates: after a hypothetical halt to fighting in Ukraine in the summer of 2026. Moscow would pivot to economic overtures and claims of crises in the Kaliningrad exclave. while simultaneously escalating threats against the Baltic states.

In the war game. the “hammer-and-nail” approach was explicit—Russia’s only way to force demands to restore what the participant calls Moscow’s Soviet-era sphere of influence. he writes. is military power.. And that framing drove the moves, the objectives, and ultimately the political outcome he claims the game produced.

## A limited incursion aimed at crippling NATO’s credibility

The exercise’s central mission, as described by the participant, was not to stage a full-scale operational takeover. It was to create a crisis on NATO’s eastern flank and force the German government to react—while, the Red Team sought to keep Washington out of the opening phase.

The first move, he says, was an attack on Lithuania. In his telling, it overwhelmed German political and military decision-making so thoroughly that NATO’s most important European ally “did nothing.”

The war game itself took place at the Bundeswehr’s Helmut Schmidt University in Hamburg and was produced as a podcast by the Berlin newspaper Die Welt. It drew outsized media attention, including after a journalist asked NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte about the outcome during a press conference.

The participant adds that the exercise was framed as political decision-making rather than testing military doctrine. campaign plans. or force design.. Still. the Red Team’s internal strategy. he says. rested on three claimed advantages Russia holds in such a scenario: speed. the ability to seize limited ground quickly. and a capacity to deter counterattacks by threatening escalation to the nuclear level.

## Speed and a 48-hour window, he says, are the hinge

According to the participant, the key flaw for NATO in a Baltic crisis is time.. He argues that in a scenario involving one or more Baltic states. Russia would already have large troop numbers in place—alongside formations positioned along the Russian and Belarusian border with NATO—while NATO. as of 2026. would need days at best and weeks or more at worst to bring reinforcements.

He also argues that if Russia acts quickly, it can seize ground before a counterattack materializes—and then hold that ground long enough to threaten escalation, deterring NATO from acting.

Why, in his view, would Berlin hold back even if Lithuania were attacked? He points to what he calls Germany’s political leaders’ avoidance of a “fundamental question”: whether they would risk a direct war with Russia, “possibly a nuclear one,” for a Baltic state.

Within the scenario, NATO monitors rising pressures. The participant describes a backdrop of joint Belarusian-Russian military exercises in western Belarus, with Russia and Belarus keeping 12,000 soldiers stationed there. Vilnius, he says, warns of an impending “emergency” in Kaliningrad.

The game begins at the end of October 2026 with Russian troops already in Belarus.

## The Kremlin, he says, expanded forces—and targeted a corridor

The Red Team participant says that when he asked what troops were at his disposal, he was told the available forces were not limited to what he initially had. He describes expanding the attacking force by drawing from four Russian combined arms armies.

On the eastern anchor of the plan, he cites anvil-like pressure from Kaliningrad: the 11th Army Corps.. From Belarus. he identifies the hammer: elements of the 1st Guards Tank Army—around 12. 000 troops—as the advance force. supported by elements of the 76th Guards Air Assault Division and several thousand troops.

He adds a second layer: the 20th Guards Combined Arms Army to provide mass and flank protection against Poland, while the 6th Combined Arms Army from the Leningrad Military District would tie down NATO forces in Estonia and Latvia.

The movement itself, as described, would run on a tight timeline.. Elements of the 1st Guards Tank Army and the 76th Air Assault Division would push from Grodno. Belarus. through Druskininkai. Lithuania. northward toward Marijampole. Lithuania.. At the same time, the 11th Army Corps would advance with a couple of thousand troops eastward from Kaliningrad.

Within 24 hours, he says they would link up at Marijampole, where the 20th Guards Combined Arms Army would secure the flanks. A second echelon would then move in and dig in. The participant’s aim: to cut the Baltics off from Poland and the rest of NATO.

Special operations forces would come first to secure bridges and intersections needed for the advance. He also describes the mobilization as occurring under the cover of military exercises, with troops leaving and going over months and equipment left behind in select assembly areas.

## “Destroy NATO but keep the Americans out,” he says

Inside the Red Team, he writes, the political strategy was shaped by two colleagues: Alexander Gabuev, director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, who played Putin, and Arndt Freytag von Loringhoven, a former German diplomat and intelligence official, who played Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

Their objective, he says, was to destroy NATO while keeping the Americans out—by rendering NATO and the European Union discredited and incapable of preventing Moscow from dictating a new European security order.

He describes hybrid warfare as important in the run-up to a conventional campaign, but not sufficient on its own for the Red Team’s political end state. He says the best instrument was Russian conventional military power.

To ensure Washington stayed out, the participant cites his desire to avoid deliberately hitting Americans—“at least deliberately”—taking a cue from what he says Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby told Europeans at this year’s Munich Security Conference.

In his telling, it worked in the game: the incursion succeeded in dislocating NATO political decision-making while the United States stayed out.

## Drone-driven “kill zone,” and a counterattack he didn’t see

The participant says game designers did not anticipate a conventional attack. instead focusing on hybrid warfare similar to Russia’s 2014 invasion of Ukraine.. In his view. a conventional attack was more reasonable given NATO’s state of defenses in Lithuania and how quickly at least part of Russia’s forces could reconstitute after a ceasefire in Ukraine.

He argues that Russia’s advantage in dynamic targeting could prevent a NATO counterattack through the Suwalki Gap—by turning the corridor into a “kill zone.”

He describes a plan to exercise fire control using drones integrated with artillery, backed by permanent surveillance, hundreds of strike drones and mine-laying drones, and a robust air and missile defense umbrella.

As for why he believed Europe’s counterattack wouldn’t arrive fast enough, he points to European shortcomings.. He says European NATO forces would not attack without degrading Russian air defenses. something he says they could not do by the fall of 2026 due to limited air offensive power and a lack of SEAD/DEAD capabilities—including shortages of anti-radiation missiles and limited equipment for breaching operations.

He also portrays the operational logic as a two-day political threshold: as long as the Americans stayed out for 48 hours, he believed the risk of an immediate European response was low.

The war game ended before a NATO counterattack and before Lithuanians could mount a counterstrike. He concedes that if those steps had played out, Russian failure was possible and perhaps likely.

But he says the question of whether Russia could physically hold terrain misses the effect of modern precision warfare: in a world of drone. artillery. and missile proliferation. he argues Russia can cut off the Baltics without physically controlling territory—through long-range precision strikes. rocket artillery. drones. and remote mining.

He also asserts that exercising fire control over the Suwalki Gap is “much easier” for Russia now than it was over the Ukrainian frontline in 2023 and 2024, crediting Russia’s improvements in dynamic targeting.

## A nuclear brinkmanship fallback, he says, was ready

While he describes the successful incursion as a key aim on its own. he also places NATO’s decision dilemma at the center of the political outcome.. In his narrative. the looming question for NATO would be what happens if Washington holds back and Europe must act without the same U.S.-level capabilities to disintegrate Russian air defenses.

Would Europeans accept casualties tied to disarming Russian air defense and precision-strike complexes? Would Poland act on its own? Would Europeans yield to Russian political demands to avoid what he calls a bloodbath?

He says that if a NATO counterattack occurred, he had prepared a plan using nuclear brinkmanship to frighten the German political leadership: activating tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, Kaliningrad, and western Russia, paired with an ultimatum that the corridor was not negotiable.

He adds, tellingly, that the phase was not needed in the game. The Red Team achieved its objectives without reaching it by paralyzing German political decision-making while the Americans stayed out.

## Roughly 100,000 in the wider theater, he says

The operation he describes. across the wider theater. draws on “roughly 100. 000 Russian troops. ” including air defense. logistics. aviation. and second-echelon formations.. Of those. about 12. 000 ground troops formed the forward advance force from Belarus on the main axis. reinforced by “a few thousand” additional maneuver elements from Kaliningrad.

He also argues that in his view—especially without an immediate U.S.. response such as air strikes against Russian forces in Kaliningrad. Belarus. and Lithuania—an attack on NATO in the Baltics is. in some respects. militarily simpler than Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.. Distances are shorter. military objectives more limited. and opponents in the initial phase are weaker. even if they constitute NATO. which he calls “the most powerful military alliance in the world.”

## What he says Germany must answer before a crisis hits

In the closing of his account, the participant shifts from the battlefield mechanics back to politics in Berlin. His takeaway, he writes, is that German leaders must confront “uncomfortable yet fundamental questions” if Europe is to endure a crisis.

He says the focus should not be sermons about commitment to NATO’s Article 5. The underlying question, he writes, is whether Germany believes it is worth going to war with Russia over the Baltics even without U.S. help.

He asks whether there is a genuine consensus on that question—and whether Berlin would endure what he describes as Putin’s nuclear brinkmanship. He ends with a blunt check on readiness: whether Germans are mentally ready for war.

If those questions cannot be clearly answered before a crisis takes place. he says Germany and NATO risk being “simply overwhelmed” by Russia’s speed and resolve in the initial phase.. And. crucially. he argues deterrence depends not only on military capabilities—where he says NATO is lacking—but on what the enemy believes about resolve.

In the war game, he says, the Red Team colleagues believed Germany would hesitate. And, he argues, that belief was enough to win.