Trump doubles down on plans to annex Greenland citing ‘Russian threat’ to island

US President Donald Trump said on Sunday that US control over Greenland, an autonomous territory within the Kingdom of Denmark, was the only way to protect it from a “Russian threat”, as he continued to ramp up the rhetoric that has already outraged many of his erstwhile European allies.

“NATO has been telling Denmark, for 20 years, that ‘you have to get the Russian threat away from Greenland,’” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform. “Unfortunately, Denmark has been unable to do anything about it. Now it is time, and it will be done!!!”

The Trump administration has repeatedly insisted that Greenland is critical to US national security — including its planned Golden Dome missile defence system — and has tried to frame American control over the island as a necessity to protect it from Russian and Chinese expansion.

Before high-stakes talks between US and Danish officials last week, Trump claimed that “if we don’t [control Greenland], Russia or China will”, and the White House posted an image on X suggesting the island faced a choice between joining the US or alignment with Russia and China.

After the talks with US Vice President J.D. Vance and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday, Danish Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen said that a “fundamental disagreement” remained between the two countries over control of the island. 

Rejecting Trump’s claims that Russia and China had military vessels stationed “all over the place” off Greenland’s coastline, Løkke Rasmussen insisted that neither Moscow nor Beijing posed a threat to the territory.

Amid fierce opposition from European leaders, the US president on Saturday threatened to impose an additional 10% in trade tariffs on the eight European countries that have publicly opposed his plans to annex the island territory, a move the nations said would “undermine transatlantic relations and risk a dangerous downward spiral”.

The Kremlin has described the situation around Greenland as “unusual” and “extraordinary from an international law perspective”.

“We proceed from the assumption that Greenland is a territory of the Kingdom of Denmark,” spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Friday. “We have heard statements from both Denmark and Greenland itself that Greenland is not going to be sold to anyone.”

In an interview with Russian state news agency TASS, Russia’s ambassador to Denmark, Vladimir Barbin, denied Trump’s claims that Moscow had designs for the island territory.

“Russia is not harbouring aggressive plans towards its Arctic neighbours, does not threaten them with military action, does not engage in blackmail and does not seek to seize their territory,” Barbin said, though he also accused NATO member states including Denmark of holding a “fetish of a Russian or Chinese threat” and using it to “militarise the Arctic”.