He announced a 10 percent tariff on eight European countries that had sent troops to Greenland for a military exercise. On Sunday afternoon, he composed a poorly punctuated, paranoiac note to the Norwegian prime minister in which he blamed the Norwegian government for not being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, said the rejection had liberated him to stop thinking about peace, and claimed that it had set him on the path to conquer Greenland to protect the United States.
Sergey Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, can rarely be described as looking happy. His brick wall of a face and somber voice, worn down by many years of smoking Marlboros, have earned him the nickname "Minister No." But when the question of Greenland came up yesterday at his press conference in Moscow, Lavrov seemed to come alive, even permitting himself a smile and a chuckle as he talked about President Trump's imperial designs on the Danish territory and the response from NATO allies.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says the world is in the most destructive arms race in history as he calls on the international community to act against Russia now, asserting in his address to the United Nations General Assembly that President Vladimir Putin wants to expand his war in Europe. Ukraine is only the first, and now Russian drones are already flying across Europe, and Russian operations are already spreading across countries, and Putin wants to continue this war by expanding it, Zelenskyy said on Wednesday at UN headquarters in New York.
It has been suggested that Vladimir Putin could be preparing for war with NATO and the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) think tank said 292,000 recruits signed contract between January and September this year, according to a Russian source. The ISW said the Russian source has "consistently provided accurate reports about changes in the Russian military command". Several thousand of the new recruits have joined reserve forces and since July Putin has been quietly building this up.