Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
The Kremlin says it is watching with “great interest” President-elect Trump’s ambitions for the US to acquire Greenland.
Trump refused to rule out the use of military force in his pursuit of Greenland this week, arguing that US control of the Danish territory is a national security issue.
“We are watching the rhetoric on these issues coming out of Washington with great interest,” Kremlin press secretary Dmitry Peskov said. he told CNBC Thursday in an email.
In comments reported by the BBC, Peskov said the Arctic was in “the sphere of Russia’s national and strategic interests and it is interested in peace and stability there.”
Peskov called the situation surrounding Trump’s language “quite dramatic.”
“We are present in the Arctic and we will continue to be there,” he said.
Also in Russia, high-profile experts closely aligned with the Kremlin have said Trump’s rhetoric gives Moscow the green light to absorb sovereign states once under the control of the Soviet Union, including the Baltic states of Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia, CNBC reported. Other experts also said Trump’s rhetoric validated Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
This has raised alarm among experts who support 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 Trump and his allies talk about Greenland, and proposals to rename the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America, take back US control of the Panama Canal and absorb Canada as a state issue 51, “plagiarizes” Putin’s rhetoric before launch. its first invasion of Ukraine in 2014.
“All this stuff about borders being unimportant, people who secretly want to be ruled by us, the unreality of their countries – not very American, not even MAGA, but very Kremlin,” he said. 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 done it took a cautious approach in responding to Trump’s rhetoric, defending the status quo while offering to discuss US security issues.
“We are open to a dialogue with the Americans about how we can cooperate even more closely than we do to ensure that American ambitions are met,” said Danish Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen.
And the Prime Minister of Greenland, Mute Egede, has played down the possibility of the autonomous territory becoming part of the US, but has said that its independence is possible.
“Greenland is ours. We are not for sale and we 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 perhaps more importantly it’s obviously one that’s not going to happen, so we probably shouldn’t waste a lot of time talking about it,” Blinken told a news conference.
