Un Wargame mostra quanto l’Europa sia vulnerabile ad un attacco russo

MARIJAMPOLE, Lithuania—European governments are preparing for war with Russia. A newly released wargame suggests they aren’t ready.

A Russian incursion, or outright invasion, into countries of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the European Union has become more likely because of Europe’s tensions with President Trump over Greenland, Ukraine, trade and other matters, many European security and political leaders say.

They point out that Russia has switched to a war economy, focusing national resources on a rearmament program and military recruitment that goes well beyond the needs of the campaign in Ukraine.

The key question is: How soon? The earlier belief in Berlin and other capitals was that Russia wouldn’t be able to threaten NATO until 2029 or so. There is now a growing consensus that such a crisis could come much sooner—before Europe, which is expanding its own investment in defense, is in a position to fight back.

“Our assessment is that Russia will be able to move large amounts of troops within one year,” the Netherlands Defense Minister Ruben Brekelmans said in an interview. “We see that they are already increasing their strategic inventories, and are expanding their presence and assets along the NATO borders.”

President Vladimir Putin wants to resurrect the glories of the Russian Empire, making countries that were once part of it, such as the Baltic nations of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, obvious targets. All of them have been members of the EU and NATO for two decades.

“Anxiety is very visible in my country, but at the same time, we are preparing to defend ourselves,” said Deividas Matulionis, Lithuania’s national security adviser. While Lithuania expects the U.S. and other NATO allies to assist in case of a Russian incursion, he added, the country’s own troops shouldn’t be underestimated: “They will be fighting, definitely, even before the reinforcements come.”

NATO military planners also worry about potential Russian designs on Swedish, Finnish and Danish islands in the Baltic Sea, parts of Poland, and the Norwegian and Finnish far north, as well as a campaign of strikes on European strategic infrastructure as far west as the Dutch port of Rotterdam.

The exercise simulating a Russian incursion into Lithuania, organized in December by Germany’s Die Welt newspaper together with the German Wargaming Center of the Helmut-Schmidt University of the German Armed Forces, became an object of heated conversation within Europe’s security establishment even before the newspaper published its results on Thursday. The exercise involved 16 former senior German and NATO officials, lawmakers and prominent security experts role-playing a scenario set in October 2026.

In the exercise, Russia used the pretext of a humanitarian crisis in the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad to seize the Lithuanian city of Marijampole, a key crossroads in the narrow gap between Russia and Belarus. Russian portrayals of the invasion as a humanitarian mission were sufficient for the U.S. to decline invoking NATO’s Article 5 that calls for allied assistance. Germany proved indecisive, and Poland, while mobilizing, didn’t send troops across the border into Lithuania. The German brigade already deployed to Lithuania failed to intervene, in part because Russia used drones to lay mines on roads leading out of its base.

“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,” said Franz-Stefan Gady, a Vienna-based military analyst who played the Russian chief of general staff.

A town of some 35,000 people, Marijampole is home to one of Europe’s most strategic highway intersections. Running southwest is the Via Baltica superhighway to Poland, clogged with trucks from all over the EU and Ukraine. Running west is the transit road between Belarus and Kaliningrad that Lithuania must, under a treaty, maintain open to Russian traffic. This week, it was busy with Russian trucks, mostly stripped of markings on their containers, that, just before the border, drove past a tower with the Ukrainian and Lithuanian flags and the motto “Together to Victory.”

In the wargame, absent American leadership, Russia managed within a couple of days to destroy the credibility of NATO and establish domination over the Baltics, by deploying an initial force of only some 15,000 troops.

“The Russians achieved most of their goals without moving many of their own units,” said Bartłomiej Kot, a Polish security analyst who played the Polish prime minister in the exercise. “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.”

In real life, Lithuania and other allies would have had enough intelligence warnings to avoid this scenario, said Rear Adm. Giedrius Premeneckas, Lithuania’s chief of defense staff. Even without allies, Lithuania’s own armed forces—17,000 in peacetime and 58,000 after an immediate mobilization—would have been able to deal with a limited threat to Marijampole, he said. Russia itself would have to consider the high stakes involved, he added: “It would be a dilemma for Russia to sustain Kaliningrad, and if Russia starts something, it must be said very clearly by NATO that if you do, you will lose Kaliningrad.”

This sounds very much like the first mission in the campaign of Broken Arrow

>Germany proved indecisive, and Poland, while mobilizing, didn’t send troops across the border into Lithuania. The German brigade already deployed to Lithuania failed to intervene, in part because Russia used drones to lay mines on roads leading out of its base.

This almost sounds comical and frankly just not that serious. It’s a wargame so I’d be interested who in this game decides that Germany is going to be indecisive, who decides Poland doesn’t intervene and by which criteria? And who decides German forces just sit it out because some roads are blocked? It sounds more like a worst possible outcome instead of a plausible one.

The war game is kislev vs empire right?

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Wargame are the way military brass can send messages to higher politicians…

IMO, Russia will do nothing before pro Russian governments win elections in various EU countries.

Once there, it will be much easier for Putin to link Kaliningrad to the mainland.

Longer term what he wants is mostly reset of energy dependence, so more gas turbines all over Europe will do the trick (allowed by “solar power” all over Northern Europe)

It’s like someone should go to the heart of Europe and galvanize the people to begin massive production of weapons so the can defend/attack if needed. Idk sounds like the beginning of ww2 all over again /shrug

One thing I can see Russia having an advantage in is FPV drones. As they have similar experience as Ukraine at this point and can cause some serious damage to ground forces, where the war to get bogged down. But seeing how Russia can barley hold and supply the front line in Ukraine, I don’t believe they can hold a full western frontline, and if Lukashenko is smart enough, he won’t get involved in a war like that.

Great, more Russian propaganda on this sub.

Russian operatives remove the fire evacuationn plan off the walls of the German barrack and set it on fire: game over for Germany.

If you look back to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan the adjustments price of a barrel of oil was over 300 dollar
When the Russian Federation attacked Georgia, annexed Crimea, and invaded Ukraine it was over 100 dollars a barrel. The trend of decreasing Oil prices (and buyers) will hopefully blunt the Kremlin’s ambitions.

When EU country does well against US, EU is a hidden super power and everyone has superiority complex. When EU does poorly against Russia it’s propaganda and the writer is a bot. This sub has become dangerously biased at this point. It goes from claiming EU is an expanding empire to depression and claims that EU is dying within a day. The is no longer any intelligent conversation here

Ah yes, The Wall’s Street Journal, an undisputed, unbiased authority on strategic defense and wargames.

Right… country which has multiple time shown it’s incompetence in increasingly laughably manners is suddenly competitive against Europe which has not yet been touched by war.

I could believe Russians have learned valuable lessons from Ukraine, and perhaps they have applied some and they are just not visible because Ukraine is learning all the time too.

But nothing can replace Russia’s enormous material losses, their military budget is smaller than 2 European nations put together and much, much smaller compared to all European NATO countries (even smaller if you think non-NATO European countries would feel personally threatened and intervene even in limited capacity, and even smaller if you include non-European NATO members), their air force lacks in 5th generation capabilities (in theory, one fifth generation fighter can take out 20 fourth generation fighters, in practice it could “only” be two to one but its still big difference in quality) and they are outnumbered in air too, their navy is weaker and smaller, and ground forces are both smaller and less advanced.

Only thing Russia does better atm is their production of artillery shells, and they still might hold advantage in quantity of conventional artillery. They may not even have quantitive advantage in any other field, let alone qualitive parity, let alone superiority.

Its not enough for Russia. Only way Russia can win, is if Europe decides to lose, and lets itself be eaten tiny piece at a time and Russia captures great quantities of gear. This is very unlikely scenario, Europe has helped Ukraine a lot (at this point more than USA, though USA still provides something Europe has no replacement for atm), Europe would take attack against Europe far more seriously.

And Europe, unlike Russia, has nuclear weapons – its not at all certain those would be used, but it makes it very unlikely Russia would use their’s even on tactical scale, let alone on scale needed to win the war.

Its much more likely Russia will continue hybrid war. There they actually have possibility of winning.

Focus on what capabilities Russia has, and think how to counter them:

* Produce 1200-1800 cruise and ballistic missiles/year
* Produce 50,000+ Shahed-type drones/year (likely up to 150,000 next year)
* Produce a few million FPV-type drones/year
* Produce a few million artillery shells/year
* Smaller quantities of other conventional weapons: 200-300 tanks, 20-25 jets/year
* Recruit about 300,000 troops/year – incredibly, they have been treating these as an expendable resource, they’re both losing 300,000 per year and adding a new 300,000 to replenish losses

Speculating about what Russia might decide to do is pointless (and usually wrong: many people were absolutely convinced Russia wouldn’t invade Ukraine because “that wouldn’t make sense”). Look at what they *can* do and plan to counter it 

The fact is that nobody in Europe is prepared to counter waves of thousands of Shaheds – if Russia launched that at anyone other than Ukraine, most of them will hit their targets. Long range attacks against infrastructure are the main threat, not a ground invasion

That said, any NATO armies on the ground would also probably have a pretty hard time against hundreds of thousands of expendable Russians armed with millions of FPVs. This is a good time to rotate some units to the front in Ukraine to get real experience

Attack with what equipment,

Attack with what? Bread vans and donkeys?