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The exercise was organized in December by Germany's Die Welt newspaper with the German Wargaming Center of the Helmut-Schmidt University of the German Armed Forces, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Sixteen former senior German and NATO officials, lawmakers and prominent security experts role-played a scenario set in October 2026.

The game's results showed that with "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 scenario imagined that Russia used the pretext of a humanitarian crisis in the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad to seize the Lithuanian city of Marijampole.

"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," the newspaper wrote, summing up the results.

Estonia's Ambassador to the United Kingdom Sven Sakkov, formerly the director of a Tallinn-based think-tank the International Center for Defense and Security, was critical of the exercise.

Sakkov agreed with a comment by the Economist's defense correspondent Shashank Joshi, who said he was "deeply sceptical" of this scenario and others, as they ignore the situation on the ground and the reactions of local populations.

The ambassador added that "many such scenarios are, frankly, insulting to frontline countries."

He said that in these exercises, frontline countries, such as the Baltics, "are too often portrayed as passive objects rather than as subjects with agency of their own."

Well put. I would add that many such scenarios are, frankly, insulting to frontline countries, which are too often portrayed as passive objects rather than as subjects with agency of their own. https://t.co/mtlBuKDPQV

After this article was published, Sakkov again commented on the situation in the Baltics.

"For clarity: Estonia has a good picture on what is happening across our Eastern border and we have the capacity to mobilise 50,000 fighters at short notice. Latvia and Lithuania are on the same footing," he wrote.

Lithuanian Colonel Gintaras Bagdonas, a former intelligence director at the EU Military Staff, told public broadcaster LRT: "What is written there is nonsense. I do not know the objectives of that war game - perhaps they are overly political, intended to show a threat or to educate their own public, German or other European citizens."

LRT said this is not the first time high-profile simulations have ignored armed forces and society in the Baltics, listing several exercises focusing on Latvia and Estonia.

However, the Lithuanian armed forces said it did not see a broader trend in Western war games of excluding Baltic militaries or societal factors.

"It is likely that the planners either do not have accurate information, rely on unverified or open sources, or exclude certain factors for other reasons," the military said in a written response to LRT.lt.

On Friday, the Lithuanian armed forces said in a statement: "Neither Article Five nor decision-making in other countries affects the start of actions by the Lithuanian armed forces."

Games can offer insights

Dr. Eoin McNamara, researcher at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs (FIIA), told ERR News that these types of role-playing war games can be useful - if done well.

"These exercises might offer an insight into how different governments and organisations like the EU and NATO are likely to respond to pressure in various scenarios," he said.

But they need to take regional differences into account, and few understand the situation on the ground in the Baltics.

"It happens regularly that those running these exercises fail to account for local defense capability and conditions in Estonia. Russian invaders will be met with a hostile reaction with Estonian reserves mobilized, a resistant population and NATO airpower dominating overhead. Some prominent war games have not understood that this first response alone will create another punishing quagmire for Russia," he explained.

Exploring German decision-making

Writing on X, Die Welt newspaper's International Security Correspondent Carolina Drüten, who said she was involved with the exercise, said the game was focused on the German response.

"The wargame was designed to examine German decision-making if NATO were politically paralysed during a crisis on the northeastern flank - not to assess whether LT [Lithuania] would fight, nor to simulate NATO's full mil [military] response - which, however, hinges on political will, esp. in the U.S," she wrote in reply to Latvia's Ambassador to NATO, M?ris Rieksti?š, who also criticised the exercise.

"Wargames are analytical abstractions by design. Modeling Lithuanian (or Polish) full national responses would require a separate wargame with different parameters," she added.

The wargame was designed to examine German decision-making if NATO were politically paralysed during a crisis on the northeastern flank - not to assess whether LT would fight, nor to simulate NATO's full mil response - which, however, hinges on political will, esp. in the U.S. 2/

This article was updated to add additional comments from Sven Sakkov and Carolina Drüten.

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Editor: Helen Wright

LIVELihtsad uudised 6. veebruarillisten: radio tallinnLIVEwatch: jupiterLIVEAbout usERR News is the English-language service of Estonian Public Broadcasting, run by a fully independent editorial team.To read up on ERR News' comments rules and to contact ERR's other services, please follow the link below.Staff, contacts & comments

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