How vulnerable is NATO to a Russian cyber attack?
The Alliance tests its member states' readiness to respond to Russian-style disinformation campaigns. However, simulation exercises, such as the one recently conducted in Bydgoszcz, Poland, do not truly confront the conditions faced by Ukrainians.
A few days ago, a fictional country named Perantsa was plunged into darkness after a cyber attack on its energy grid by an authoritarian neighbor that has long coveted part of its territory.
NATO included this scenario in a broader simulation exercise aimed at testing the readiness of Alliance member states to respond to disinformation campaigns similar to those Ukraine faces daily since Vladimir Putin ordered his troops to invade the neighboring country in February 2022.
The simulation of the attack by Kartii, as the hostile state was named, took place in Bydgoszcz, Poland, where NATO's only structure staffed and jointly commanded by Ukrainian officials and officers operates.
During the three-day exercise, Perantsa was called upon to deal with a series of online attacks aimed at breaking social cohesion and confusing the population under severe crisis conditions. Beyond the blackout scenario, participants were tasked with managing two other emergency situations: a major flood and a hacker attack on the banking system.
Ukrainian officials, who played the role of Kartii officials and commanders, flooded social media with AI-generated messages attributing each crisis to the incompetence and corruption of the Perantsa government. At the same time, they expressed their willingness and readiness to rush to aid the affected citizens of the fictional NATO member country. "Perantsa cannot help you, but Kartii can," read one of the posts on the authoritarian Kartii government's website.
The Perantsa team responded with calls for national unity and warnings against looting and other forms of social unrest and disorder. According to the final assessment of a jury composed of academics and disinformation experts, Kartii was barely defeated in two of the three scenarios.
Embedding the Ukrainian Lessons
The Joint Analysis, Training and Education Centre (JATEC) of the North Atlantic Alliance in Bydgoszcz, Poland, was established just last year with the aim of leveraging the now vast field experience of Ukrainians and consequently enhancing the readiness of allied states to face a potential future Russian attack.
One-third of the center's staff—about 60 people in total—comes from Ukraine, including members of the armed forces, the Ministry of Defense, and the intelligence services of the war-torn country.
As reported by the Financial Times, for Kyiv, participation in such initiatives, as well as the exchange of military expertise, is a way to directly engage in Alliance activities, given that Ukraine's accession to NATO is considered unlikely.
The joint use of empirical knowledge from the field "contributes to achieving our main goal: the fastest possible interoperability between Ukraine and the Alliance," Colonel Valerii Vishnivskyi, head of the Ukrainian delegation at JATEC, told the London newspaper.
Many of the meetings and information exchanges within the center's operations take place behind closed doors. The Ukrainians share their valuable knowledge regarding the use of drone swarms, electronic warfare, and decentralized command structures, with NATO offering in exchange greater access to the Alliance's technological and engineering capabilities.
Crisis simulation exercises certainly help strengthen "inter-agency cooperation," both between state actors and between military and civilian structures, noted Alexandru Fotescu, a researcher specializing in so-called cognitive warfare (where the goal is to prevail not on the battlefield but in people's minds) at the Helmut Schmidt University of the German Armed Forces in Hamburg.
However, both he and other experts acknowledge that "a game does not truly confront us with the conditions that Ukrainians face" regarding Russian disinformation campaigns, which over the past decade have perfected their methods.
In wartime, he added, "things are extremely emotionally charged and there is an intense existential involvement," in contrast to "a scenario designed mainly for training."
The simulation was funded by the German army and conducted via the digital military wargame platform of the French company Atos.
Lieutenant Colonel Yvonne Retter of the German army and director of the German Armed Forces' Digitalization Center noted that Berlin supports such readiness exercises also due to internal weaknesses in coordination.
As she told the Financial Times, various government authorities in her home country, including the Ministries of Defense and the Interior, "operate in parallel but not in a coordinated manner and do not always harmonize their communication." In contrast, Ukrainians have "a very realistic understanding of how opponents operate and communicate, so, yes, in this regard we can learn from them," she added.
During the simulation exercise, the Ukrainian participants proved more creative, more adept at using AI tools, and quicker in their reactions, the German officer acknowledged. According to her, Kartii failed to achieve its goals because it did not focus on a coherent narrative, referencing only a few central messages. However, a Ukrainian who participated in the exercise challenged this conclusion, warning that "in real conditions, the key messages change daily: consider what Russia is doing."
