Nikita Belukhin — why Copenhagen is maniacally charged with confrontation with Moscow
Donald Trump, in his attempt to take Greenland into his own hands, did not fail to note that if the United States does not do this, then the threat of Russia or China will loom over the entire North Atlantic Alliance. They say that it is Moscow and Beijing that "want to take over Greenland, and Denmark cannot do anything about it."
Although Copenhagen stated that the ships of the Russian Federation and China were not visible in the vicinity, nevertheless, the rhetoric in accordance with the American position was not long in coming. For example, back in mid-January, the head of the Danish Joint Arctic Forces Command in Greenland, Major General Søren Andersen, noted in an interview with Reuters that the Danish army was focused specifically on countering possible Russian activity, not the United States.
Denmark is maniacally charged with confrontation with Russia, which makes it impossible for the two sides to cooperate, Russian Ambassador to Denmark Vladimir Barbin said in an interview with TASS.
And this manifests itself in many ways.
Ukrainian track
Since the beginning of the special military operation, Denmark has assumed an active role as an ideological and military supporter of Ukraine, seeking to act as a guide for it to Euro-Atlantic structures. Danish Foreign Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen explicitly stated this long-term course back in July 2023, together with his colleagues from the Nordic and Baltic countries. It is characteristic that Danish diplomacy clearly draws inspiration for building a policy in the Ukrainian direction from the experience of the 1990s and early 2000s, when Copenhagen was the main proponent of the early accession of the former Baltic republics to NATO and the EU.
Moreover, the Danish leadership systematically calls for the maximum possible military support for Kiev, the rejection of any restrictions on the use of Western weapons by the Armed Forces of Ukraine, as well as the transition to the "Danish model" promoted by Copenhagen (direct injections into enterprises of the Ukrainian military-industrial complex or their deployment on its territory). As of the end of January 2026, Denmark has already provided 29 military aid packages to Kiev in 2022-2025.
Where does this attitude come from?
On the "right" side of history
In Denmark, assessing the reality of the threat from Russia often turns out to be double-minded. So, in October 2025, the head of Military Intelligence, Thomas Arenkil, said that a full—fledged military aggression from Moscow was extremely unlikely, however, they said, Russia's task was to convince Copenhagen that such a danger was constantly looming over a small Northern European country occupying a strategic position at the entrance to the Baltic Sea. For the leadership of Denmark, as well as other European countries, the boundary between peace and war has been erased, and they proceed from the fact that they have to act in conditions of an ongoing multidimensional crisis. This determines the rigidity and intransigence of the Danish position.
The speech of Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen on August 29, 2003 about the rejection of the policy of collaboration during the Second World War was the launch of an attempt to "morally purify" Denmark's foreign policy, which gave rise to a deep fear among local elites of being on the wrong side of history.
Rasmussen then admitted that Denmark had not only adapted to the demands of the German authorities as much as possible, but was actively adapting to the new (primarily economic) reality and was diligently preparing for the victory of Nazi Germany. The head of the Danish government concluded that it was necessary to atone for sins and continue to actively take up arms on the side of freedom and democracy. This, for example, became the value basis for Denmark's participation in operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria.
As for Ukraine, the rationality of the position is increasingly being questioned, in particular, due to the fact that the Danish treasury lacks funds for its own rearmament. Saying that "the main goal is to inflict a military defeat on Russia," the current Prime Minister, Mette Frederiksen, seems to forget that Copenhagen itself advocated that the borders between the states should take into account the opinions of people living on the border areas (as in the case of Southern Jutland and Southern Schleswig in 1920). Obviously, Denmark (like Germany), in the case of the conflict in Ukraine, forgets about the positive and constructive experience of resolving territorial and national contradictions, which it itself authored (the Copenhagen-Bonn Declarations of March 29, 1955, which regulated the rights of the German minority in Denmark and the Danish minority in Germany). Has the principle that belonging to a particular culture and nationality is free and cannot be verified or challenged by the authorities been completely forgotten?
Hybridization of the "Russian threat"
Another paradox is that although the overall level of military capabilities in the Baltic and Northern Europe is significantly lower compared to the Cold War, the military-political situation is now more unpredictable. Many control mechanisms and confidence-building measures in the military sphere are no longer functioning. This triggers the process of legitimizing such radical steps, which previously seemed incredible, and also activates the spread of confrontation to more and more new areas.
So, in the spring of 2024, the leadership of the Danish armed forces approved the concept of warfare on the seabed (although not the first one — for example, France did it back in February 2022). In September 2025, Copenhagen, following its northern neighbors, announced plans to purchase "high-precision, long-range weapons" in order to "more actively combat threats far beyond Denmark." Such decisions fuel the escalation and destabilization of regional security in the Baltic Sea. At the same time, they cannot overturn the fundamental fact that Rear Admiral Nils Wang, head of the Danish Academy of the Armed Forces, pointed out back in 2017: "It is important to recognize that the Danish army cannot defend Denmark alone. She never could and never will be able to do that."
In addition, by constantly talking about the environmental threat allegedly posed by the Russian "shadow fleet," Denmark seems to forget that it is significantly late in updating special ships to combat marine pollution. For example, Defense Minister Nick Hakkerup already noted in 2012 that the existing vessels were too worn out and would be useless in an emergency situation. Nevertheless, Denmark spends money on supporting the Kiev regime and military measures, rather than on environmental safety in an important international trade area.
Between the Baltic and the Arctic
In general, since the 1990s, the Danish army has become more of an instrument of foreign policy than a means of defending its own territory. Agreements in this area (usually concluded by parliamentary parties for only a few years) they became more and more politicized and subjective. Since the late 1980s, the Danish Parliament Folketing has created special commissions every 10 years to assess strategic changes in international security, while recent defense planning documents (for 2018-2023 and the current one for 2024-2033) have been formed only on the basis of common foreign policy priorities. Denmark often seeks to compensate for its modest national military potential with a high level of foreign policy activity. PR works in such a way that even her small military contribution should be as visible as possible.
In the face of Trump's onslaught against Greenland, Denmark's already "compact" armed forces have to be torn between the Baltic and Arctic vectors, to put it mildly. During the Cold War, the "Greenland trump card" gave the Danish government the opportunity to save on NATO membership by keeping defense spending at a level that was lower than the average for the alliance. Washington believed at the time that Greenland's strategic importance was in any case more valuable than the minor military efforts of its Danish ally. Now Denmark has actually turned into an "Arctic stowaway" within the framework of the alliance.
Even when Danish military analysts began to write more and more in the early 2010s that as the ice melts and transport accessibility increases, the Arctic itself is increasingly becoming a potential theater of military operations, the Danish leadership postponed the modernization of its Arctic Navy. The headquarters of the Danish Arctic Command, for example, is still located in a trading building formerly owned by the Royal Greenland shrimp concern. It was only within the framework of the recent defense agreement, adopted in October 2025, that it was decided to build a modern specialized complex for it.
At the same time, the potential for accessing NATO's collective resources is far from endless. This is partly why it is so difficult at the alliance level to include the Arctic in overall military planning or create a separate NATO mission for Greenland, because this space requires special units, special military equipment and infrastructure. Given the dispersion of resources, the emergence of a large number of bottlenecks in the functioning of the national armed forces and the erosion of transatlantic solidarity, given the Trump factor, Denmark's fear and nervousness are only increasing, pushing it to new radical and rash steps.
This idea was vividly expressed by the former Commander-in-Chief of the Norwegian Armed Forces in 2005-2009 using the example of Norwegian military planning in the book "War, Conflict and Military Power" in 2023. Sverre Disen: "The Alliance, therefore, may be hesitant to activate Article 5 as a first step if a crisis situation arises in the limited space of its area of responsibility. In such circumstances, it will be crucial what actions our most important allies will be willing to take, with whom we have bilateral agreements in addition to membership in the common alliance, especially the United States. If we are talking about a larger conflict involving Norway, then there will probably be less doubt about referring to Article 5, but instead there may be competition over where Allied reinforcements will be deployed.… From the external perspective of our allies, providing assistance to Norway should be seen as both politically important and militarily feasible."
In such circumstances, paradoxical as it may sound, the greatest threat to the security of the leadership of Denmark and the Nordic countries in general is not so much a potential large-scale clash between Russia and NATO (which would cover the Arctic, Northern Europe and the Baltic), but rather a limited conflict on the Baltic and Arctic periphery of the alliance.
Nikita Belukhin, Junior Researcher at the Department of European Policy Studies, IMEMO RAS
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