Russian President Vladimir Putin has pointed to US President Donald Trump‘s aggression toward Greenland to illustrate a ratcheting up of tensions in the region.
“We are talking about serious plans on the American side with regard to Greenland. These plans have long-standing historical roots,” Putin said on Thursday at the International Arctic Forum in Murmansk.
“It is obvious that the US will continue to systematically force its geopolitical, military and economic interests on the Arctic,” he added.
Just one day earlier, Trump reiterated his desire to take control of the semi-autonomous Danish territory, saying, “I think we’ll go as far as we have to go. We need Greenland and the world needs us to have Greenland, including Denmark.”
Trump has previously said the US would take control of Greenland by force if necessary.
Why the US and Europe are battling for Greenland’s future
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Like Greenland’s people and politicians and the entire Danish government, Denmark’s Defense Minister Troels Lund Poulsen on Thursday rejected Trump’s stance, saying, “I need to clearly speak out against what I see as an escalation from the American side.”
“We will not put up with the United States thinking they can decide how the Danish realm, including Greenland, should look in the future,” Poulsen said.
US Vice President JD Vance is scheduled to make an uninvited visit to Greenland on Friday. He is the latest of a string of US representatives to visit the island territory since Trump returned to the White House.
Russia to station more troops in the Arctic
The Trump administration has claimed that US ownership of Greenland is key to national as well as global security.
Putin, who is currently conducting a war of aggression in neighboring Ukraine and has so far rejected US ceasefire proposals there, used his Greenland comments in Murmansk to claim that Russia, unlike the US, has never threatened anyone in the Arctic.
But, he added, Moscow is determined to defend its interests in the region.
To that end, Putin said Russia would commission and build more icebreakers, as well as expanding capacity at Russia’s northernmost ports and increasing the number of soldiers it stations in the region.
Trump’s spat with Greenland: What’s next for Greenlanders?
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Putin offers return on Arctic investment
Though Putin struck an ominous tone when it came to the prospect of geopolitical conflict in the Arctic, he also flashed a big carrot — offering commercial investment opportunities to foreign partners, whom the Russian leader said would be guaranteed a return.
With Arctic ice melting, the so-called Northern Sea Route offers an alternative to sending ships through the Suez Canal and has enabled Russia to slash travel times to Asia by up to two weeks as it shifts trade eastward due to Western sanctions over Ukraine that have severed Moscow’s business ties with Europe.
Before invading Ukraine, Putin promoted the route as a strategic national priority. Climate change has now made it possible for Russian ice breakers to keep the country’s entire northern shoreline open to ship traffic year-round.
With the opening of those northern shipping lanes has also come discussion of a new global deep-sea mining race for raw materials as the US, Canada, Russia, Norway and Denmark (as well as increasingly, China) all hope to exploit the potential wealth of minerals and fossil fuels that lies beyond their northern borders.
Edited by: Zac Crellin