Denmark tells Trump to stop threatening to seize Greenland

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Denmark’s Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen called on US President Donald Trump and his allies to stop making threats to seize control of Greenland as tensions flared between the Nato allies following America’s intervention in Venezuela.

Trump said on Sunday “we do need Greenland”, and the wife of one of his closest allies posted a map of Greenland with the US flag across the Danish territory on the social media platform X, accompanied by the sole word of “soon”.

Frederiksen on Sunday evening made her most significant rebuff of Trump and the US following his comments about the vast Arctic island in an interview with The Atlantic.

She said: “I have to say this very directly to the United States: it makes absolutely no sense to talk about the need for the US to take over Greenland . . . I would therefore strongly urge the US to stop threats against a historically close ally.”

Her comments came after Greenland’s Prime Minister Jens Frederik Nielsen described the map of the Danish territory posted by Katie Miller — wife of Trump’s deputy chief of staff and influential adviser Stephen Miller — as “disrespectful”.

Nielsen said the US rhetoric was “entirely unacceptable” and added: “Enough is enough. No more pressure. No more insinuations. No more fantasies of annexation.”

Trump’s military intervention in Venezuela has been portrayed by him and senior US officials as part of a concept of “hemispheric defence” in which America calls the shots throughout the Americas.

US officials have also included Greenland — geographically part of North America but territorially part of Denmark and Nato — in that concept.

Trump has insisted for the past year that the US would take control of Greenland and has accused Denmark of neglecting its territory and Arctic security.

But Frederiksen said on Sunday evening the US had “no right to annexe one of the three countries” in the kingdom of Denmark, which also includes the Faroe Islands.

She added the kingdom “and thus Greenland is part of Nato and is therefore covered by the alliance’s security guarantee”.

The Danish prime minister also pointed out the US has a defence agreement with Copenhagen that gives it the right to have a military base on Greenland.

The US has in recent decades significantly scaled back its presence on Greenland, from more than 10,000 soldiers to less than 200 currently.

But Trump and his vice-president JD Vance have claimed Denmark has failed to look after Greenland’s security, even as Copenhagen has in recent months pledged to spend more than $4bn on boosting it.

Jesper Møller Sørensen, Denmark’s ambassador to the US, responded to Miller’s social media post by saying: “We expect full respect for the territorial integrity of the kingdom of Denmark.”