Russia watching Trump’s Greenland ambitions ‘with great interest’
The Kremlin says it’s watching with “great interest” President-elect Trump’s ambitions for the U.S. to acquire Greenland.
Trump declined to rule out using military force in his pursuit of Greenland this week, arguing American control of the Danish territory is a national security issue.
“We are watching the rhetoric on these topics coming out of Washington with great interest,” Kremlin press secretary Dmitry Peskov told CNBC on Thursday in an email.
In comments reported by the BBC, Peskov said the Arctic was in Russia’s “sphere of national and strategic interests and it is interested in peace and stability there.”
Peskov called the situation surrounding Trump’s language “rather dramatic.”
“We are present in the Arctic zone, and we will continue to be present there,” he said.
Also in Russia, high-profile pundits closely aligned with the Kremlin have said Trump’s rhetoric gives Moscow the green light to absorb sovereign states formerly under the control of the Soviet Union, including the Baltic states of Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia, CNBC reported. Other pundits also said Trump’s rhetoric validated Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
This has raised alarm among experts supportive of Ukraine’s defense against Russia’s full-scale war, including Timothy Snyder, an expert on the history of Central and Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union and the Holocaust.
Snyder said the way that Trump and his allies talk about Greenland — and proposals to rename the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, retake U.S. control of the Panama Canal and absorb Canada as the 51st state — “plagiarizes” Putin’s rhetoric before he launched his first invasion of Ukraine in 2014.
“All this stuff about borders not mattering, people secretly wanting to be ruled by us, the unreality of their countries – not very American, not even MAGA, but very Kremlin,” he wrote on the social platform X.
“At the very least, Trump is giving Putin cover for Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine by recycling Putin’s arguments against our own neighbors.”
Danish leaders have taken a cautious approach in responding to Trump’s rhetoric, defending the status quo while offering to discuss U.S. security concerns.
“We are open to a dialogue with the Americans on how we can possibly cooperate even more closely than we do to ensure that the American ambitions are fulfilled,” said Danish Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen.
And Greenlandic Prime Minister Múte Egede has downplayed the possibility of the autonomous territory becoming part of the U.S., but he said its independence is possible.
“Greenland is ours. We are not for sale and will never be for sale. We must not lose our long struggle for freedom,” he said.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken struck a similar tone in remarks this week from Paris.
“The idea expressed about Greenland is obviously not a good one, but maybe more important it’s obviously one that’s not going to happen, so we probably shouldn’t waste a lot of time talking about it,” Blinken said at a press conference.
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