By Thomas Grove
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. "Crimea is no less important for the Russian Federation than Greenland is for the United States," he said.
The remarks spoke directly to the fears of some European leaders that Trump's move to take Greenland would degrade the norms of international law and potentially embolden Putin further in Ukraine and Eastern Europe, where smaller countries rely almost entirely on the collective might of the alliance.
"It's a five alarm emergency that's dividing North America from Europe," said John Foreman, a former U.K. defense attaché in Moscow and Kyiv. "Russia must be sitting back thinking Christmas just keeps coming."
He said Russia's glee over NATO's troubles was likely tempered by the possibility that Trump does gain control of Greenland, expanding the U.S. footprint in the Arctic. Moscow has invested heavily in reopening Soviet-era military bases in the region and building the largest fleet of icebreakers in the world, hoping to outmaneuver alliance countries in the Far North.
But in the near term, the fight over Greenland is sowing instability in an alliance that Moscow has long seen as a threat. Putin's invasion of Ukraine was aimed in part at preventing Kyiv from joining NATO. Since then, European leaders have accused Moscow of carrying out a shadow war on the continent, including drone incursions and cutting of undersea cables, aimed at destabilizing Western societies.
NATO's eastward creep has long been one of Putin's chief grievances against the West. The Soviet Union's Cold War-era answer to NATO, the Warsaw Pact, fell apart as a series of democratic revolutions and the fall of the Soviet Union opened the way for nations once aligned with Moscow to join the Atlantic bloc. Some of those countries, such as Estonia, Lithuania and Poland, are now some of the alliance's staunchest members.
Putin called out NATO's growing membership in a 2007 speech at the Munich Security Conference that is seen as marking the beginning of a new era of tension between Moscow and the West. "Against whom is this expansion intended? And what happened to the assurances our Western partners made after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact?" he asked.
Sergei Markov, a Russian political analyst who has worked for the Kremlin, said that the growing rift between Washington and Brussels could be the opening shot of a total realignment in Western security policy to the benefit of Russia.
In a post on Telegram, a social media app popular in Russia, he speculated that tensions could boil over with the two sides exchanging fire and dissolving NATO. Ukraine, without its European backers, would fall into the hands of Russia, creating peace on Moscow's terms.
"Russia will restore very good relations with Ukraine, good relations with half of the countries of Europe and normal relations with the United States," he said. "Greenland is the ideal solution."
But many Western leaders see such a scenario as far fetched. They are working to convince Trump his pursuit of Greenland is unnecessary, head off a trade war and hold the alliance together.
NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, who has tried to cultivate a constructive relationship with the president, spoke with Trump by phone early Tuesday. Trump has agreed to hold meetings about Greenland at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
"I am committed to finding a way forward on Greenland," Rutte told Trump, in a message the president posted on social media.
Russian presidential envoy Kirill Dmitriev is also expected to be in Davos. Dmitriev worked with U.S. special envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner to draft a peace plan for Ukraine that was panned by Kyiv and European leaders for catering to Moscow's wishes.
Earlier this week, Dmitriev celebrated the NATO tensions over Greenland in a post on X. "Collapse of the transatlantic union. Finally -- something actually worth discussing in Davos," he said.
Write to Thomas Grove at thomas.grove@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
January 20, 2026 23:00 ET (04:00 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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