indian express

European governments are stepping up military planning amid rising fears that Russia may move against NATO or European Union countries sooner than expected. Europe may not be fully prepared to respond to such a threat, a recent wargame has revealed. The Baltic states, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, are considered key risk areas.  The wargame, held in December by Germany's Die Welt newspaper and the German Wargaming Center at Helmut Schmidt University, simulated a Russian incursion into Lithuania in October 2026. It involved former senior German and NATO officials, lawmakers, and security experts. Wargames are designed to identify gaps, risks, and possible outcomes without real fighting. In the simulation, Russia used a claimed humanitarian crisis in its Kaliningrad exclave to justify taking over the Lithuanian city of Marijampole, a transport hub near the borders of Poland and Belarus. The narrative created enough uncertainty for the United States to avoid invoking NATO's...