It has been a long-standing Kremlin strategy to create a permanent divide between the United States and Europe, weakening its traditional adversaries in the West.
For years, Russia has promoted sabotage and disinformation to undermine Western institutions seen as obstacles to Moscow’s territorial ambitions and dreams of regaining Soviet-style status and power.
Breaking up NATO, the powerful Western military alliance, has been a particularly powerful fantasy, especially since the war in Ukraine.
Concerns about possible expansion of the alliance were used by the Kremlin to justify its brutal and large-scale invasion almost four years ago.
Imagine, then, the joy in the Kremlin’s corridors of power at the prospect of fragmenting Western unity and NATO imploding over an unlikely issue: threats to Greenland by US President Donald Trump.
Russia watches anxiously from the sidelines as its former enemies consume each other.
“China and Russia must be having a picnic,” noted Kaja Kallas, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, on X, after Trump threatened to impose extraordinary tariffs on European allies who oppose a US takeover.
Russia’s position in the crisis
Both China and Russia firmly reject claims that they have territorial plans for Greenland – even the Danish military maintains that there is no significant threat of invasion from the east.
But in fact, on Russian state television, pro-Kremlin experts celebrated Trump’s measures in Greenland, which they assessed as “a catastrophic blow to NATO” and “truly tremendous for Russia”.
The view is that, with the NATO alliance facing its biggest crisis in decades and transatlantic unity potentially fragmented, Western support for Ukraine’s war effort will certainly waver, giving Moscow an even stronger battlefield advantage.
Unfortunately for Kiev, this assessment may come true. But the Kremlin is not popping the champagne yet.
At least initially, there was a relatively timid and even critical official response from Russia, with Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov telling journalists that Trump was “operating outside the norms of international law.”
But the Kremlin has tolerated or overseen untold violations of international norms and laws throughout years of increasing authoritarianism, at home and abroad.
US control over Greenland may well be seen in Moscow as a real challenge to Russia’s own dominance in the Arctic region.
However, the Kremlin likely has deeper concerns as it – like the rest of the world – watches with discomfort and alarm as the Trump administration wields seemingly unbridled global military and economic power.
“Unilateral and dangerous actions often replace diplomacy, efforts to reach a compromise or find solutions that serve everyone,” Russian President Vladimir Putin recently lamented about the state of the world in his first foreign policy speech of the new year.
“Instead of states dialoguing with each other, there are those who trust in the principle of the power of the strongest to assert their unilateral narratives, those who believe they can impose their will, teach others how they should live and issue orders,” Putin added, without any sign of self-criticism.
The speech also appears to refer to US actions on the international stage.
Moscow’s external alliances are threatened
Moscow’s network of alliances – badly wounded by last year’s overthrow of the regime of Russian-backed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad – is rapidly being unraveled.
Iran, a longtime ally of Russia, was the target of painful US and Israeli airstrikes last year. Tehran could come under attack again after the recent brutal crackdown on anti-regime protests, threatening the survival of the pro-Moscow Islamist government.
Earlier this month, the dramatic capture by American forces of Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro, a Kremlin favorite, was yet another slap in the face to Russia.
And the fact that Trump names Cuba, a traditional ally of Russia and an enemy of the US, as the next target for regime change suggests further foreign policy humiliations for the Kremlin.
Moscow has long disparaged the post-World War II rules-based international order, dismissing those rules as a Western tool, replete with double standards, to contain its adversaries, chief among them the Kremlin.
Moscow has openly defied the United Nations Charter’s prohibition on changing borders by force and has systematically pushed for a world where great powers are entitled to exclusive spheres of influence.
Washington now appears to increasingly share the Russian worldview – on paper, an important victory for Moscow.
But, at least for now, celebrations of that victory are on hold due to concerns about what kind of dangerous new world might be ushered in.
Dealing with an increasingly reckless Trump could be a considerable challenge for a Kremlin used to dealing with a more stable and predictable American government.
As an influential Russian tabloid, Moskovskij Komsomolets, anxiously commented, referring to Trump, “we have the feeling that the head doctor of the asylum has also gone crazy and that everything has fallen apart.”
