A war game run in Germany has modelled a limited Russian incursion into Nato territory and found that Moscow could hold ground for several days without triggering an immediate military response from the alliance.
The exercise was organised by Die Welt together with the German Wargaming Centre, which is based at Helmut Schmidt University, the University of the Federal Armed Forces in Hamburg. The scenario focused on the Baltic region and the land link between Poland and Lithuania known as the Suwałki Gap — a corridor that connects the Baltic states to the rest of Nato by road and rail and lies between Russia’s Kaliningrad exclave and Belarus.
According to reporting by The Wall Street Journal, the simulation concluded that a Russian move framed as a “humanitarian” operation could create political hesitation in Berlin and Washington and buy time for Russian forces on the ground.
The game brought together 16 participants, including former senior German and Nato officials and security specialists, split into teams representing Germany and Russia. In the Russian team, the role of President Vladimir Putin was played by Alexander Gabuev, director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center.
In an interview with Meduza, Gabuev described the format as a structured role-play with a scripted starting point but freedom for participants to choose their responses once the crisis began. The premise assumed the Russia–Ukraine war had been halted by a ceasefire in May 2026, after which Russia sought to rebuild economic ties with Germany with offers of investment and cheap gas, while simultaneously raising tension around the Baltic states through military exercises and troop deployments in Belarus and Kaliningrad.
The trigger event in the scenario was a rapid escalation in Lithuania. As the German cabinet convened an emergency meeting, the simulated Russian leadership moved to establish what it called a “humanitarian corridor” between Belarus and Kaliningrad, arguing that Lithuania was obstructing supplies to the exclave and that a humanitarian emergency was developing.
Gabuev said the Russian team’s stated objective from the outset was political rather than territorial: to test Nato cohesion and widen divisions inside the alliance. The team’s concept, he said, was to combine speed, ambiguity and limited force in order to complicate decision-making among allies.
In the game, the Russian side used drones to establish fire control and then mined the Lithuanian–Polish border area, a step designed to deter Polish troops from moving directly against Russian units while also signalling that Moscow’s aim was not an advance into Poland itself. Russian forces then entered Lithuanian territory and seized the city of Marijampolė, close to the Suwałki corridor and a significant node on regional transport routes.
The reported outcome was that Russian forces remained on Nato territory for three simulated days without being forcibly removed. Participants representing Nato members imposed measures short of war, but did not open fire on Russian troops and did not agree to an immediate escalation under Article 5, the alliance’s collective defence clause.
A key dynamic, as described by Gabuev and reflected in the WSJ account, was the political framing of the operation. The Russian team sought to present its move as a limited humanitarian mission rather than an outright attack, and even suggested the deployment of a small number of unarmed American observers to verify that civilians were not being harmed. The proposal was declined, and the refusal was interpreted within the game as a signal that Washington would not readily commit to a confrontation in a grey-zone scenario.
The simulation did not claim to predict events, and Gabuev emphasised that real-world intelligence warning and military readiness could alter the sequence. However, he argued that the exercise was intended to demonstrate plausibility: that a fast-moving, limited incursion coupled with an information strategy could put allied political processes under strain.
One of the participants quoted by The Wall Street Journal, Nico Lange of the Munich Security Conference, framed the risk in terms of opportunity — suggesting that a Russian decision to test Nato would depend on whether the Kremlin perceived the moment as favourable.
The broader context is a continuing debate inside Nato over timelines and preparedness on the eastern flank, including the speed at which allied governments could reach political agreement in a crisis and the extent to which deterrence depends on clear American signalling. The war game’s organisers and participants presented it as a stress test of decision-making under pressure, rather than a forecast.
For the Baltic states and Poland, the Suwałki corridor remains central because it is the primary land route for reinforcement in a contingency, while Kaliningrad and Belarus provide Russia with proximity and options for coercive pressure.
First published on defencematters.eu.
