The contradiction points to a deliberate strategy: exploiting the crisis to weaken Western unity while keeping Trump focused elsewhere.
In the weeks since Trump captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and threatened to intervene in Iran, Russia appears to have set aside its other geopolitical ambitions, including in the Arctic, to keep Washington in its corner on Ukraine. Meanwhile, it seems to be hoping tensions over Greenland will crack NATO and drive further wedges between Kyiv’s most important allies.
“It would have been difficult to imagine something like this happening before,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said during a press conference on Tuesday, drily gloating over the diminishing “prospects of preserving NATO as a unified Western military-political bloc.”
The alarm over Greenland has already paid dividends for the Kremlin, pushing Ukraine off the agenda in Davos as European leaders scramble to the Alpine ski town to try to defuse the crisis.
“Greenland [is the] ideal solution,” wrote Sergei Markov, a pro-Kremlin political analyst, on his Telegram channel.
Tensions between Europe and the U.S. could serve as a stepping stone to the break-up of NATO. “Then the EU will be forced to stop its war against Russia,” he continued.
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