Russia cheers the growing NATO rift over Greenland

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Russian President Vladimir Putin has sought to undermine NATO for nearly two decades. Now, as President Trump pushes to control Greenland, Moscow is cheering from the sidelines.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov appealed to Trump’s ego this week as the president pressed his pursuit of the Arctic island. “By resolving the issue of Greenland’s annexation, Trump will undoubtedly go down in the history books. And not only in the history of the United States, but in world history," he said.

Trump has said the U.S. must acquire Greenland, a semiautonomous territory of Denmark, for national security. He has threatened to impose 10% tariffs on eight European nations that sent small groups of troops to the Arctic island in recent days.

The spat is turning into a perilous moment for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which has served as the security foundation of the U.S.-led global order since World War II. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Tuesday that the alliance was in “deep crisis," adding that he hadn’t previously imagined a scenario in which one member of the alliance would attack another. Lavrov said Russia was merely monitoring the situation.

He dismissed Trump’s assertion that Russia would seize the island if the U.S. didn’t, saying Moscow had no such plans. But he also appeared to give Moscow’s blessing to Trump’s desire to take the island, comparing Greenland with Russia’s first land grab on Ukrainian territory—the 2014 annexation of Crimea, Kyiv’s peninsula on the Black Sea.