Gotland Island, May 2025. A 24-year-old drone pilot with the callsign Tarik watches Swedish units stop training yet again — to figure out what to do differently. "If this were real, they'd already be dead," he told the AP agency, which was present at the maneuvers.
Exercise Aurora 26 — Sweden's largest national military exercise this year, running from April 27 to May 13 with 18,000 troops from 13 countries — took place for the first time in history after Sweden's accession to NATO. And for the first time, Ukraine, which is not a NATO member, acted not as a student but as both an instructor and an aggressor simultaneously.
How it looked from the inside
According to the scenario, a hypothetical adversary built up forces along NATO's eastern flank, while Gotland faced power outages and food shortages caused by sabotage. Sweden's task was to respond before Article 5 could be invoked. Ukrainian pilots played the role of the aggressor.
"Swedish forces have potential, but they need to improve their drones, tactics — and commanders need a deeper understanding of drone warfare."
— pilot with the callsign Karat, AP
The exercise was paused three times. Not due to technical failures — but so personnel could process mistakes in real time.
Gotland — more than just an island
The strategic stakes are clear: the island is located between the Swedish coast and Russia's Kaliningrad exclave, where Moscow has deployed missiles. As Swedish Armed Forces Commander-in-Chief General Mikael Kleesson told AP: "Whoever controls Gotland controls the central part of the Baltic Sea." After the Cold War ended, Sweden effectively abandoned military presence on the island, but Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine forced a reconsideration of that decision.
Kleesson also called a Putin attempt to test NATO with a limited operation — seizing a narrow strip of allied territory to probe the alliance's collective response — "a completely realistic scenario."
Aurora 26 — not an exception, but a trend
Gotland is merely the latest point on the map of Ukrainian "victories" at NATO training grounds. At the Hedgehog 2025 exercise in Estonia, a team of ten Ukrainian drone operators in half a day hypothetically destroyed 17 NATO armored vehicles and conducted 30 more attacks — ultimately putting two entire alliance battalion battle groups out of action in a single day. At the REPMUS sea exercise off the coast of Portugal, a multinational "red" team under Ukrainian command won all five episodes against NATO forces.
- Hedgehog 2025 (Estonia): 10 Ukrainians against 16,000 NATO troops from 12 countries — two battalions neutralized in a day.
- REPMUS/Dynamic Messenger 2025 (Portugal): Ukrainian command won all five naval scenarios, including "sinking" a NATO frigate.
- Aurora 26 (Sweden): the exercise was paused three times due to the effectiveness of Ukrainian attacks.
American General Curtis King, according to AP, noted that modern armies must rely much more on camouflage, survivability, and networked sensor technologies. However, the integration of radars from different manufacturers and different countries into a single system is not yet complete: "We're not there yet."
The paradox of the invitation
Ukraine came to Aurora 26 as part of the JEF-Ukraine initiative — an expanded partnership with British multinational rapid reaction forces. In other words, a country denied NATO membership was officially invited to train alliance armies — and it won. Meanwhile, the Trump administration has suspended intelligence sharing with Kyiv and is discussing reducing the U.S. military presence in Europe, which Swedish Commander-in-Chief Kleesson is forced to publicly deny: Americans are "not leaving."
If NATO officially recognizes Ukrainian drone doctrine as a training standard — the question of Ukraine's NATO membership will take on a different logic: not "is Ukraine ready for NATO," but "is NATO ready to fight without Ukraine."
