President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that he believes that US President Donald Trump is serious about plans to annex Greenland and care that the West could use the Arctic as a springboard for future conflicts.
After joining in January, Trump has repeatedly said that he would like to see Greenland, an autonomous territory of Denmark, under control of the United States, arguing that Washington could use the island to improve his own security.
“It is a serious mistake to believe that this is some extravagant speech from the new US administration. That’s none of that,” Putin said during a speech on an Arctic forum in the northern city of Murmansk.
“We are talking about serious plans on the US side with regard to Greenland. These plans have many years of historic roots,” the Kremlin leader added.
Putin said that although Russia was not directly involved in the issue of Greenland’s sovereignty, he was still concerned that “NATO countries generally increasingly designate the northern north as a springboard for possible conflicts.”
Greenland, seeking independence from Denmark, is already home to a US military base that American vice president JD Vance is ready to visit Friday.
The island is strategically situated between North America and Europe at a time of increasing us, Chinese and Russian interest in the Arctic, where sea lanes have opened due to man -made climate change.
Denmark has rejected Trump’s calls to take over the island and say that the population of Greenland has shown that they do not want to be part of the United States.
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