Denmark’s prime minister praised the people of Greenland on Thursday for showing resilience in the face of what she called great pressure from President Donald Trump‘s administration for Washington to take control of the semi-autonomous Danish territory.
Opinion polls have shown that nearly all Greenlanders oppose becoming part of the United States, and in recent weeks anti-American protesters have staged some of the largest demonstrations ever seen on the Arctic island.
“The attention is overwhelming and the pressure is great, but it is in times like these that you show what you are made of,” Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen wrote in a Facebook post addressing the people of Greenland.
“You have not been cowed. You have stood up for who you are – and you have shown what you stand for. That has my deepest respect,” she said.
On Wednesday, Trump reiterated his desire to take the island.
“We need Greenland for national security and international security. So, we’ll, I think we’ll go as far as we have to go. We need Greenland and the world needs us to have Greenland, including Denmark,” Trump told journalists in the Oval Office. U.S. Vice President JD Vance is set to visit the U.S. military base at Pituffik in northern Greenland on Friday although an earlier plan for his wife Usha to visit a popular dog-sled race was called off amid local protests. The planned visit to the sporting event had set off a diplomatic spat between Copenhagen and Washington, and the Danish government welcomed the eventual cancellation.
The decision to only visit the Pituffik base was a “de-escalation” of the situation, Denmark’s foreign minister said on Wednesday.