NATO war games modeled Ukraine’s counteroffensives and a Baltic invasion

A Dossier Center investigation, “Little Wars,” describes how NATO and the Ukrainian Armed Forces used classified war games to plan real operations. The documented cases include Ukraine’s Kherson counteroffensive in autumn 2022 and its southern offensive in 2023.

After Russia’s full-scale invasion, a secret headquarters was established in Wiesbaden, Germany, where Ukrainian and Western generals planned operations together. The games’ results were presented to Ukraine’s military and political leadership, including Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Valerii Zaluzhnyi, the Dossier Center reported, citing The Washington Post.

The Kherson operation ended with the recapture of the city and the Dnipro’s right bank. The 2023 offensive did not achieve its stated objectives: Ukrainian forces failed to break through in the Zaporizhzhia direction or cut the land corridor to Crimea.

KORA, Excel and paper maps

The planners used KORA, IABG’s Virtual War-Gaming System. They also worked with Excel spreadsheets and moved pieces across maps, combining digital and analogue tools.

Ukrainian military staff games are conducted under NATO standards. In 2020, the US military held a staff-games seminar in Lviv, while centers for exercises and senior-officer training operate at Ukraine’s National Defence University in Kyiv.

NATO changed its training scenarios

Colonel Martin O’Donnell of SHAPE said NATO shifted its focus after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine from operations outside the alliance to large-scale warfare inside member states. The games are among the sources used for assessments of the likelihood and possible timing of aggression.

In 2015, Petr Pavel, then chief of the Czech General Staff, said Russia could occupy the Baltic states within two days. The investigation said the forecast was based on RAND games. RAND revised its assessment after 2022, but researchers said recent NATO scenarios remain troubling for Europe.

In a February 2026 Berlin game, 16 former senior German and NATO officials modeled a conflict ending in a ceasefire. The “red” team captured Lithuania with 15,000 virtual troops, while the “blue” team did not open fire in response.

Artificial intelligence in war games

Researchers at King’s College London ran 21 nuclear-escalation scenarios in 2026 involving three major AI models. Nuclear weapons were used in 95% of the simulations.

O’Donnell said NATO uses AI to accelerate decision-making and forecasting, but does not currently foresee a situation in which humans would be entirely absent from the process.