Pushed further on Greenland and if the US interest is now over, Frederiksen says “unfortunately not.”
“I think the desire from the US president is exactly the same,” she says, adding Trump remains “very serious” about controlling the territory.
She says that she is open to discussions on ramping up security arrangements for the Arctic, but there are obvious limits to it.
Can you put a price on it, if Trump keeps pushing?, she gets asked.
“Of course not. Can you put a price on a part of Spain, or a part of the US, or a part of anywhere else in the world?,” she responds.
She stresses that this goes back to “one of the most basic democratic principles” of respecting sovereign states.
“And the Greenlandic people have been very clear: they don’t want to become Americans,” she says.
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In the meantime, an early evening panel on Arctic security is now under way over at the Bayerischer Hof – and the room is absolutely packed.
Denmark’s Mette Frederiksen says it’s not usual to see so much interest in the region’s security.
But she is “very satisfied that Nato is now working [on] security in the Arctic region in a more structured way,” and wants to see a “permanent presence” in the Arctic region, including in and around Greenland.
She says that as climate change progresses, there will be need to monitor more closely what Russia and China “will do around Greenland,” but stresses “we are not there yet” – in a clear rebuke to Trump’s (repeated) claims on this issue.
Greenlandic prime minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen strikes a similar tone, as he said that the talks about Russian and Chinese activity is premature.
“But we are not naive and we see the longer perspective when our routes in the north west and the northeast … [when] they they melt, there might be more traffic,” he says.
But he says allies are aligned, as Nato steps up its activity in the region through the new Arctic sentry mission.
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I am now at the Munich Residence, where Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy will receive the Munich Security Conference’s Ewald von Kleist Award for 2026 later tonight.
Poland’s prime minister Donald Tusk will deliver laudatory remarks.
Getting into this beautiful building – the seat of government and residence of the Bavarian dukes, electors and kings from 1508 to 1918, as its website says – requires passing several security checkpoints, but it’s only understandable given numerous other EU leaders and senior officials are also expected to be in attendance.
I will bring you the key lines from this evening’s speeches, but there is still some time to go before then.
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Zelenskyy’s comments show how much still needs to be resolved before an agreement on ending the Russian invasion on Ukraine can be agreed.
Our diplomatic editor Patrick Wintour told me that it appears that “he is still in conflict with the Americans about a lot of the final aspects of the deal”.
Looking ahead to next week’s Geneva talks, Wintour said:
“I don’t think there’s going to be any short-term progress. I don’t think Vladimir Putin feels he’s under enough pressure at the moment.”
Separately, Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy has given a press briefing on the margins of the main conference in the last hour.
He said he was due to meet with the US secretary of state Marco Rubio today, and hold a phone call with US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner later tonight, with his chief negotiator and former defence minister Rustem Umerov talking to them “several times a day”. Zelenskyy also met with a delegation of US senators earlier today.
He stressed it was important to engage with the US through all possible channels to ensure no one can say that Ukrainians were stalling the talks.
Zelenskyy also spoke about his expectations for the Geneva negotiations next week, saying he was surprised to hear about Russia’s decision to change the head of its delegation after the first two rounds.
He said he saw this as a potential move to delay decisions, but counted on Americans to continue talks and not let Russia force them to reopen previously resolved issues.
He also confirmed he was still seeking a political commitment to allow Ukraine into the European Union, ideally by 2027, as part of the security guarantees.
“We have to be ready, to prepare everything … technically, Ukraine has to be ready in 2027, but the date of accession depends on all these dialogues with 27 member states,” he said.
Zelenskyy was also asked if he worried he could also get poisoned by Russia, after the earlier report about Alexei Navalny
“I can’t think about Vladimir Putin and his poison ambitions, if he has them. I try not to think about it; otherwise it’s all I think about,” the said.
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If you are looking for a quick summary of events so far, I caught up with our diplomatic editor Patrick Wintour who is also here at the Munich Security Conference to get his thoughts on what the events of the last 48 hours mean for the transatlantic relationship.
Here is his answer:
Poland’s Sikorski gets asked about what would Poland’s response be if Russia crossed the border and invaded its territory.
He gives this rather entertaining answer:
“We joined Nato for common defence.
If they cross the border, start killing Nato citizens, Polish citizens, we would expect the North Atlantic Council to meet and to activate the contingency plan, and after that, the plan is very easy: we win, they lose.”
And that ends this panel.
US Democratic senator Elissa Slotkin – also on the panel, in a rather awkward position of having to comment on the US policies she disagrees with – says she is “very concerned” about the 2026 US midterm elections in November.
“He [Trump] is telling us what he wants to do. He is laying it out for us, and is up to the Americans to believe him, right? That, just like in 2020, he said, If I don’t win, then it wasn’t a free and fair election. He is repeating the playbook now, threatening to put uniformed federal agents around polling locations. I mean, he’s telling us the playbook.”
She says “the question is what are we going to do as Americans to defend our democracy that we helped invent.”
Lithuania’s president Gitanas Nausėda offers a bit more insight into Russia and Belarus’s hybrid threats affecting his country.
He says Lithuania has been “exposed to different kind of hybrid attacks,” first with irregular migration which he says was an “artificially created problem by Alexander Lukashenko, sending people from the Middle East, from north Africa, to Minsk, then from Minsk to the border.”
“And we could see the officials and employees of Alexander Lukashenko’s regime instructing them how to cross the border, how to create this destabilising situation at the border,” he says.
More recently, Lithuania faced further disruptions caused by meteorological ballons sent across the border from Belarus to block the Lithuanian airspace, he says.
He says Belarus should face stricter sanctions over its role in Russia’s campaign against the west.
Sikorski also says that the Ukraine war is increasingly about “who will crack first” as Russia seems to be determined to test the resolve of the Ukrainian people as its own economy is under growing pressure.
He says:
“Putin says he wants peace and in a sense … every dictator and every conqueror wants peace: if you give up and you capitulate, you’ll have peace.
But the question is under what conditions, and [it seems that] Russia can tolerate Ukrainianness as a sort of provincial version of Russian folklore but Russia cannot tolerate Ukraine, or at least Putin cannot, as a nation with its own identity, history, interests, including security interests, and its own desire to integrate with other organizations than Russia’s.
The question in this war is, who will crack first?
And Ukrainians are showing that they’re not cracking on the frontline. Russian advances are tiny, and history teaches us that that bombing populations doesn’t work. The Luftwaffe didn’t break the spirit of London, the Royal Air Force didn’t break the will to fight of the people of Germany. In fact, they get stiffened.
So, the real question is when will Putin run out of resources to carry out this war, and the cracks are beginning to show in the Russian economy.”
He also goes back to his previous point as says that Europe should be at the table because the stakes are “incredibly high” not just for Ukraine, or the eastern flank of Europe.
“It is about the place of Europe in the future, and the distribution of power in the world, or in other words, who will be the third leg – it’s China, the United States, and [either] Russia or the European Union. Don’t ask me which I would prefer.”
Poland’s foreign minister Radosław Sikorski says that Europe should get a place at the table in peace talks on Ukraine as it carries by far the largest part of the burden of the war and supporting Kyiv’s resistance.
He says:
“It was natural for the US to be in the lead in these negotiations, when the US was providing the bulk of the military assistance, and the US was also brave and effective in deploying strategic intelligence to deprive the Russians of the casus belli in the days before the war and in the early days of the war.
But I would like, particularly our American guests, to know – because it’s not fully in the American infosphere – that we are now paying for this war.
The American outlay for the war for last year was close to zero. We are buying American weapons to be delivered to Ukraine. There is no package in the US Congress and that there isn’t even the prospect of a package.
If we are paying, if this is affecting our security, not just Ukraine’s, then we deserve the seat at the table, because the outcome of this war will affect us.”
Pistorius says that Germany will keep looking for ways to secure “a reliable peace, because Ukraine’s future is fundamental, not just to European security, but to global security.”
He says that “the ball is in Putin’s court.”
“He is the one who is dragging out negotiations and is showing no willingness to compromise. He is shifting the cost of war to his own people, but he must not be mistaken: we will continue doing everything in our power to protect Ukraine as an independent, sovereign European nation.”
He also says Ukraine will need strong, reliable security guarantees.
Pistorius also curiously picks up on Rubio’s speech earlier today, cautioning that:
“Yes, our international organisations have failed to solve many crises and conflicts, but the answer cannot be for a great power to go it alone. That might work in the short term, but in a world of more competing great powers, this will definitely not work in the long term.”
He says that Europe and its allies face “a highly armed and aggressive military power with the world’s largest nuclear arsenal at its disposal,” warning that “Russia is driven by raw power, revisionism and egoism.”
“Nowhere does this become more apparent than its brutal war of aggression in Ukraine,” he says.
He says Germany is responding to the challenge, amending its constitution to spend more, and reforming the army.
Opening, Germany’s Pistorius says that the US starting to look away from Europe isn’t entirely surprising, as “to be frank, having the United States provide for our security was never supposed to be the norm, [and] it was always an exception.”
“Naturally, exceptional arrangements never last forever. They are not meant to.”
But he says this week’s Nato ministerial meeting gives him a sense that Europe is getting realistic and pragmatic – and gives reasons to be optimistic.
“The US has made this new burden sharing very clear, and Europe is acting. Nato is becoming more European so that it can remain transatlantic,” he says.
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Next up on the main stage we have a panel on “defending Europe and supporting Ukraine” with Germany’s defence minister Boris Pistorius, Lithuania’s president Gitanas Nausėda, Poland’s foreign minister Radosław Sikorski, Ukraine’s foreign minister Andii Sybiha and US senator Elissa Slotkin.
Expect some good lines as pretty much all of them tend to be rather outspoken…
Meanwhile, Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado is taking part in the MSC, joining online.
You can watch her panel here:
Frederiksen also expressed her frustration that any disputes between allies like over Greenland could undermine the alliance more broadly.
“[It’s] only once in our history [that] we had to activate Article Five, that was because of what happened in the US. The rest of time we have been able to provide freedom, democracy, prosperity and wealth [relying] only [on] the wording of Article Five, because all our enemies know that if they attack us, they will attack all of us.
…
Maybe the most important thing … that is secured by us as political leaders, … is our unity.
Therefore to question the transatlantic relationship, or to threaten allies, or to do anything that [would] undermine the idea of Article Five [would] be a threat to all of us, So let’s stick together.
That’s my short advice.”
And that ends this panel.
Spain’s Sánchez also says that a part of the EU’s response to Russian challenges needs to be to reform the bloc and continue with its enlargement.
But he also says that Europe needs to tackle other issues than Russia, including on climate, health and inequalities.
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: theguardian.com
