It has long been the Kremlin’s strategy to drive a permanent wedge between the United States and Europe, dividing and weakening the West’s traditional adversaries.
For years, Russia has promoted sabotage and disinformation to undermine Western institutions, which are seen as stubborn obstacles to Russia’s territorial ambitions and dreams of regaining Soviet-style status and power.
The dissolution of NATO, the West’s powerful military alliance, has become a particularly prevalent fantasy, especially since the Ukraine war. Concerns about possible NATO expansion were used by the Kremlin to justify a brutal all-out invasion nearly four years ago.
Imagine then, in the corridors of Kremlin power, the unity of the Western world splintering, jubilant at the prospect of NATO, a bulwark against the Russian threat for 80 years, finally collapsing over the improbable Greenland issue and US President Donald Trump’s unwelcome offer for Danish territory.
Russia watches from the sidelines as its former enemy expends itself.
“China and Russia must be in a big fight,” European Union foreign policy chief Kaja Karas told X after President Trump threatened to impose extraordinary tariffs on European allies that oppose the U.S. takeover.
China and Russia firmly deny claims they have territorial plans for Greenland, and even the Danish military says there is no serious invasion threat from the east.
But in fact, on Russian state television, pro-Kremlin pundits celebrated President Trump’s move in Greenland, calling it a “devastating blow to NATO” and “truly monumental for Russia.”
With the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) alliance facing its biggest crisis in decades and its transatlantic unity potentially fractured, it is understandable that Western support for the Ukraine war is likely to wane, giving Russia an even stronger whip on the battlefield.
Unfortunately for Kiev, that may prove to be an accurate assessment.
But the Kremlin’s champagne cork has not yet been popped.
The Kremlin’s official response, at least initially, was relatively muted, even critical, with Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov telling reporters that Trump was “acting in violation of the norms of international law” in Greenland, an attack from the Kremlin, which has tolerated or overseen countless violations of international norms and law through years of growing authoritarianism at home and abroad.
US control of Greenland could be seen in Moscow as a real challenge to Russia’s own control in the Arctic region.
But the Kremlin, like the rest of the world, likely has deeper concerns as it watches with displeasure and alarm as the unpredictable Trump administration wields seemingly unlimited military and economic power around the world.
Russian President Vladimir Putin recently lamented in his first foreign policy speech of the new year that “unilateral and dangerous actions are often replaced by diplomacy and efforts to reach compromises and find solutions that are convenient for everyone.”
“Instead of encouraging dialogue between countries, there are countries that rely on the principle of justice by the strong and make unilateral statements, and there are countries that believe they can impose their will, tell others how to live and give orders,” Putin added, without showing the slightest hint of self-awareness, in an apparent reference to the actions of the United States on the international stage.
Already, Moscow’s network of allies, badly damaged by the overthrow of Russian-backed Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad last year, is rapidly disintegrating.
Iran, a longtime ally of Russia, was the target of devastating airstrikes by the United States and Israel last year. In the aftermath of the recent brutal crackdown on anti-government protesters there, another round of crackdowns could soon threaten the survival of the pro-Moscow Islamic regime.
The dramatic seizure by U.S. forces of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, a Kremlin darling, earlier this month was another blow to Moscow.
And the fact that Cuba, a traditional Russian client state and enemy of the United States, is next on Washington’s list of targets for regime change suggests further foreign policy humiliation lies ahead for the Kremlin.
Moscow has long despised the post-World War II rules-based international order as nothing more than a double-standard Western tool to contain its adversaries, chief among them the Kremlin.
The Russian government openly challenges the United Nations Charter’s prohibition on changing borders by force and routinely calls for a world in which great powers have the right to exclusive spheres of influence.
The U.S. government now increasingly appears to share Russia’s worldview—on paper, a significant victory for Moscow’s tenacity.
But celebrations of that victory have been put on hold for now amid concerns about what kind of dangerous new world is ahead.
For the Kremlin, which is accustomed to dealing with more stable and predictable U.S. administrations, dealing with an increasingly reckless President Trump may pose considerable challenges.
The influential Russian tabloid Moskovsky Komsomolets referred to President Trump as the “head doctor of the mental hospital” and commented worriedly, “Even the head doctor of the mental hospital has gone crazy and it feels like everything is ruined.”
