Russian President Vladimir Putin’s top spokesperson is jumping for joy about President Donald Trump’s fight with NATO over Greenland.
The Western military alliance is tied in knots over Trump’s desire to take the frozen Danish territory for himself and Russia is loving every second of it, this week egging him on and stoking his ego.
“By resolving the issue of Greenland’s annexation, Trump will undoubtedly go down in the history books,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, according to The Wall Street Journal. “And not only in the history of the United States, but in world history.”
Trump claims control of Greenland is vital to U.S. and NATO security, despite Greenland already being under the alliance’s protection as a semiautonomous territory of Denmark.
Russia has been NATO’s chief provocateur for decades, but surprisingly is not the agent of one of the alliance’s lowest ebbs since its creation after WWII.
Sergei Lavrov, the Russian Foreign Minister, said on Tuesday that Trump’s courting of Greenland had plunged NATO into “deep crisis.”
“It was hard to imagine before that such a thing could happen,” he said, according to AP, pointing out that it was possible “one NATO member is going to attack another NATO member.”
He added, “It’s a major upheaval for Europe, and we are watching it. The Euro-Atlantic concept of ensuring security and cooperation has discredited itself.”
Lavrov then took the opportunity to brush off Trump’s claim that his country, too, had designs on taking the Arctic island for itself and that it was merely keeping tabs on the situation.
The Journal reports Lavrov then likened Trump’s interest in Greenland to his own country’s need for Crimea, which it annexed from Ukraine in 2014 in what has become a prelude for its full-scale invasion of the country in 2022.
“Crimea is no less important for the Russian Federation than Greenland is for the United States,” he said, in a suggestion of approval.
Trump, meanwhile, has turned up the heat on some of his closest allies, threatening to impose 10 percent tariffs on eight European countries that sent troops to Greenland in reaction to his posturing.
Russia’s hatred for NATO runs deep. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was founded in 1949 to prevent a repeat of the Axis powers of Germany, Japan, and Italy attempting to conquer the world by ensuring mutual defense.
After the fall of the Nazis and the onset of the Cold War, the Soviet Union emerged as the main power that NATO sought to contain. After the USSR’s fall in 1991, after a brief cooling in tensions, Russia took on the mantle of its predecessor and used NATO’s growing membership and proximity to its borders as a pretext for its invasion of Ukraine.
Now the rules-based international system that NATO was pivotal in forging is under threat.
What began as throwaway remarks from Trump, 79, has now morphed into a full-scale crisis for the U.S.’s closest allies.
Speaking to the Journal, former U.K. defense attaché in Moscow and Kyiv, John Foreman, said, “It’s a five-alarm emergency that’s dividing North America from Europe. Russia must be sitting back thinking Christmas just keeps coming.”
Lavrov and Peskov aren’t the only Russians reveling in the chaos Trump has caused, with its presidential envoy Kirill Dmitriev saying in a post on X ahead of the Davos World Economic Forum: “Collapse of the transatlantic union. Finally—something actually worth discussing in Davos.”
At Davos, Trump claimed that he would not use force, but reiterated his desire to take control of Greenland.
“I’m seeking immediate negotiations to once again to discuss the acquisition of Greenland by the United States,” he said.
“We never asked for anything and we never got anything. We probably won’t get anything unless I decide to use excessive strength and force where we would be, frankly, unstoppable. But I won’t do that,” he added.
“That’s probably the biggest statement I made because people thought I would use force. I don’t have to use force. I don’t want to use force. I won’t use force.”
“This would not be a threat to NATO,” he later added in his speech. “This would greatly enhance the security of the entire alliance, the NATO alliance. The United States is treated very unfairly by NATO.”
Greenland has outwardly had its nose out of joint by the notion that it is a commodity to be exchanged, with the Greenland Dogsledding Association telling Trump’s envoy, Gov. Jeff Landry, he is no longer welcome at its annual race.
It said it had been “informed that the tourist company that invited Governor Jeff Landry from the United States has withdrawn its invitation.”
