RT by @mikenov: RT by @mikenov: 🇷🇺🇺🇦🇳🇦🇹🇴 RUSSIA SPENT YEARS GAMING WARS AGAINST NATO — BUT ITS OWN SIMULATIONS COULD BE RIGGED BEFORE THEY EVEN STARTED Russia built an elaborate war-gaming machine for conflicts against NATO, the United States, Japan and Ukraine, according to reporting cited by the Dossier Center. Some exercises involved more than 1,000 officers; one US-Japan scenario modeled 320,000 virtual troops. Putin himself reportedly set parameters for some of the largest games. The process was extensive. One team played Russia, another mimicked the enemy using NATO tactics. Judges could sever Russian communications, introduce nuclear strikes and change battlefield conditions.

🇷🇺🇺🇦🇳🇦🇹🇴 RUSSIA SPENT YEARS GAMING WARS AGAINST NATO — BUT ITS OWN SIMULATIONS COULD BE RIGGED BEFORE THEY EVEN STARTED

Russia built an elaborate war-gaming machine for conflicts against NATO, the United States, Japan and Ukraine, according to reporting cited by the Dossier Center. Some exercises involved more than 1,000 officers; one US-Japan scenario modeled 320,000 virtual troops. Putin himself reportedly set parameters for some of the largest games.

The process was extensive. One team played Russia, another mimicked the enemy using NATO tactics. Judges could sever Russian communications, introduce nuclear strikes and change battlefield conditions. Computers calculated losses, while General Staff chief Valery Gerasimov personally reviewed commanders’ decisions afterward.

The largest simulations were run from a bunker beneath the General Staff Academy in Moscow, with officers participating both in person and over secure links from across Russia.

But there was a serious flaw: the system could reproduce the assumptions of the people running it.

Russian commanders could underestimate opponents. Intelligence and security agencies could provide distorted information. Scenarios ending in Russian defeat could reportedly be removed before the exercise even began.

Moscow also invested heavily in the technical side. Iris-T generated 3D battlefields using military maps, aerial photography and satellite imagery. TEST allowed troops to engage digital targets. Kolodets 3D recreated tank and helicopter cockpits. Spektr-7E connected commanders’ plans to soldiers operating simulators and tracked the outcome of every move.

By 2021, Spektr-7E reportedly contained around 5,000 models of weapons, vehicles, military units and other objects.

Russia continuously fed battlefield experience back into these systems. Lessons from Syria were incorporated into later exercises. Then, in spring 2022, the General Staff conducted two major simulations centered on the war in Ukraine, removing the concept of a continuous front and adding special operations forces, foreign mercenaries and cities Russian troops had failed to capture.

The West was adapting too.

After the full-scale invasion, NATO increasingly gamed scenarios built around a Russian attack. In one exercise, Russia used drones to mine the Lithuania-Poland border before sending 15,000 troops into Lithuania. The German side chose not to open fire. In the simulation, Russia won.

Ukraine and its partners were also using war games operationally. Ukrainian and Western generals in Wiesbaden modeled the 2022 liberation of the Kherson region and the 2023 southern offensive using NATO’s KORA system, Excel and even ordinary pieces placed on a physical map.

The technology could be sophisticated. The harder problem was ensuring that the simulated battlefield was allowed to contradict what commanders wanted to believe.

— @WW3finalboss Sep 12, 2026