Ukraine takes part in Locked Shields 2026 NATO cyber exercise

Image of participant of the Locked Shields 2026 exercise at the Norwegian Cyber Command in Lillehammer, Norway. (SHAPE)

Ukraine took part in the live-fire cyber defence exercise Locked Shields 2026 with NATO allies, a representative of the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence (CCDCOE) confirmed to Janes on 30 April 2026.

Ukraine was part of a joint team together with Romania and Moldova. “As a general rule, the participants are from both the military, government and private sector,” the representative added.

According to the CCDCOE representative, the most novel lesson from a cyber perspective is that “in the golden age of AI, where there are minimal restrictions and guardrails on what large language models [LLMs] can do for both defence and offence; for both sides, this is a massive force multiplier that did not exist in its current form even a year ago”.

For three days, all participants trained against real-time cyber attacks on critical infrastructure and national information technology (IT) systems including 5G infrastructure, satellite management systems, power grids, and electronic voting systems, according to a 24 April press release from NATO's Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE).

This also involved special systems including air defence, battle management systems (BMS) and basic operating systems such as Windows and Linux, according to the representative from CCDCOE. The exercises range from simple defacement and disinformation campaigns to more complex advanced persistent threat (APT)-level campaigns that nations may face across various systems, the CCDCOE representative added.

When asked by Janes