Denmark planned to blow up runways in Greenland if Trump followed through on takeover threats

DENMARK PLANNED TO blow up runways in Greenland is the United States followed through on President Donald Trump’s threat to attack the island earlier this year, according to reporting from Danish public broadcaster DR. 

In January, as Danish soldiers were flown to the semi-autonomous territory in response to escalating threats from the Trump administration, they brought with them explosives and and stocks of blood, DR said.

The broadcaster cited a number of Danish government sources, as well as high-ranking intelligence officials from Denmark, France and Germany. 

Even before the US president was proclaiming “We need to have Greenland for national security” in January, the Denmark had reached out to the German and French governments, as well as those in Nordic countries, seeking their support following Trump’s election early last year. 

Both France and Germany offered to send soldiers to Greenland, DR reported. 

Those preparations were being made as early as last summer, but according to the sources DR spoke to, they were accelerated after the US abducted Venezeula’s President Nicolál Maduro in early January 2026. 

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A contingent of troops — including special forces personnel — from Denmark, Germany, France, Norway and Sweden were flown in shortly after the attack on Venezuela. 

Danish F-35 fighter jets and French naval vessels were also deployed. 

At the time, European governments had cast the deployment of the relatively small number of troops as a means of demonstrating their commitment to the defence of the Arctic island, which Trump had insisted the Danes could not defend from supposed Russian or Chinese attacks. 

“Soldiers of NATO are expected to be more present in Greenland from today and in the coming days. It is expected that there will be more military flights and ships,” Greenland’s deputy prime minister Mute Egede told a news conference on 15 January, adding they would be “training”.

Greenland “is a European territory that is placed under NATO protection,” French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said at the time, adding: “NATO, NATO’s allies, European countries are fully capable of defending their territory against any threats, wherever they may come from”.

French President Emmanuel Macron also said at the time, however, that “we live in a world where destabilising forces have awakened” and will continue to pose threats, as “certainties that sometimes lasted for decades are being called into question” by “competitors [Europe] never thought it would see” (seemingly hinting at the US).

Still, the sources who spoke to DR were under no illusions that it would not have been possible to hold out against an attack by the US, but one Danish defence source said:  

“The cost to the US would have to be raised. The US would have to carry out a hostile act to get Greenland.”

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