Geopolitics Decanted with Dmitri Alperovitch
Jun 28, 2026 · 53 min · 7 segments
Franz-Stefan Gady just played the Russian Chief of General Staff in a German war game — and won. He joins Dmitri Alperovitch to explain how he manufactured a NATO crisis in the summer of 2026, why the…
Franz-Stefan GadyGuest
Dmitri AlperovitchHostNow, now, the other assumptions you, you made is that you had the element of surprise, unlike twenty twenty-two, when we had months of warning of what the Russians were gonna do because of the incredible intelligence coups we had against them.
And, you know, not, not just intelligence coups, but, you know, you and I and others were watching the mobilization that was taking place over the course of many months in the lead-up to the war.
So you assume that none of that is happening, in particular on the mobilization front, that you're using forces already deployed, either for an exercise in Belarus or in Kaliningrad, right? So you don't have this-
So, so troops would already have been at the border, but the idea would have been, and again, I, I put that together on, on half a page to essentially leave the equipment there but rotate the forces out and then essentially conduct a shadow mobilization of these particular units again.
But leave the equipment there after the end of the exercises and then quickly, quickly get these troops back.
And then also basically within like twenty to forty-eight hours present NATO with, okay, there are like four combined arms armies at the border of all these Baltic states, and the Russians are demanding this and that, and still it's unclear what exactly the Russians are going to do.
Uh, so we combined it with a clever, I mean, we thought it was clever information warfare campaign, where we left, left all the options on the table, but it was never very specific.
So we didn't issue like an ultimatum like in December twenty twenty-one or something like that.
If I remember what, what you were tweeting at the time or saying in public at the time as well.
Well, s- so one, one, one thing that, uh, you know, we should note as well that th- this idea that NATO, and particularly Germany, but frankly other countries in NATO, including the United States, uh, the questions about their willingness to fight for the Baltics has been brought up even at the time of the, uh, of the inclusion, uh, of those countries into NATO, right? And the fact that this terrain is very, very difficult.
Even the NATO war plans themselves reportedly talk about losing that territory and then fighting to retake it back because of the challenges of conducting a standard defense there.
But what do you think are the implications for the Baltics themselves, uh, here? Uh, obviously, the, the, the first thing that any country should do is focus on how it would defend itself, regardless of who may or may not come to their help.
So what could they do? And, and I'll, I'll sort of ask a leading question here because I've been advocating directly in my visits, uh, to the Baltics and other places that they should essentially be Iran and particularly focus on long-range strike capabilities, that you're not gonna have sufficient forces, land forces to defend the territory.
But if you can inflict massive pain on Russia, particularly major Russian cities like St. Petersburg, which is a stone's throw away, but even maybe Moscow, with long-range strikes that have the payload, and so not just, you know, drones, but predominantly missiles and, and hopefully even ballistic missiles, which they don't have today, that would create a massive deterrent effect for Russia.
So on the one hand, I think you're right in terms of longer-range strike capabilities.
One of the major challenges of the Baltics is that they really lack depth, so it's very difficult to conduct a maneuver defense, essentially.
Not that the militaries of the Baltic countries would be able to actually engage in maneuver defense and conduct combined arms operations at scale in the first place, just because they lack capabilities, they lack training as well.
They're building up the forces, and th-they're formidable, don't get me wrong.
Now, now, the other assumptions you, you made is that you had the element of surprise, unlike twenty twenty-two, when we had months of warning of what the Russians were gonna do because of the incredible intelligence coups we had against them.
And, you know, not, not just intelligence coups, but, you know, you and I and others were watching the mobilization that was taking place over the course of many months in the lead-up to the war.
So you assume that none of that is happening, in particular on the mobilization front, that you're using forces already deployed, either for an exercise in Belarus or in Kaliningrad, right? So you don't have this-
So, so troops would already have been at the border, but the idea would have been, and again, I, I put that together on, on half a page to essentially leave the equipment there but rotate the forces out and then essentially conduct a shadow mobilization of these particular units again.
But leave the equipment there after the end of the exercises and then quickly, quickly get these troops back.
And then also basically within like twenty to forty-eight hours present NATO with, okay, there are like four combined arms armies at the border of all these Baltic states, and the Russians are demanding this and that, and still it's unclear what exactly the Russians are going to do.
Uh, so we combined it with a clever, I mean, we thought it was clever information warfare campaign, where we left, left all the options on the table, but it was never very specific.
So we didn't issue like an ultimatum like in December twenty twenty-one or something like that.
If I remember what, what you were tweeting at the time or saying in public at the time as well.
Well, s- so one, one, one thing that, uh, you know, we should note as well that th- this idea that NATO, and particularly Germany, but frankly other countries in NATO, including the United States, uh, the questions about their willingness to fight for the Baltics has been brought up even at the time of the, uh, of the inclusion, uh, of those countries into NATO, right? And the fact that this terrain is very, very difficult.
Even the NATO war plans themselves reportedly talk about losing that territory and then fighting to retake it back because of the challenges of conducting a standard defense there.
But what do you think are the implications for the Baltics themselves, uh, here? Uh, obviously, the, the, the first thing that any country should do is focus on how it would defend itself, regardless of who may or may not come to their help.
So what could they do? And, and I'll, I'll sort of ask a leading question here because I've been advocating directly in my visits, uh, to the Baltics and other places that they should essentially be Iran and particularly focus on long-range strike capabilities, that you're not gonna have sufficient forces, land forces to defend the territory.
But if you can inflict massive pain on Russia, particularly major Russian cities like St. Petersburg, which is a stone's throw away, but even maybe Moscow, with long-range strikes that have the payload, and so not just, you know, drones, but predominantly missiles and, and hopefully even ballistic missiles, which they don't have today, that would create a massive deterrent effect for Russia.
So on the one hand, I think you're right in terms of longer-range strike capabilities.
One of the major challenges of the Baltics is that they really lack depth, so it's very difficult to conduct a maneuver defense, essentially.
Not that the militaries of the Baltic countries would be able to actually engage in maneuver defense and conduct combined arms operations at scale in the first place, just because they lack capabilities, they lack training as well.
They're building up the forces, and th-they're formidable, don't get me wrong.
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