In the first weeks of 2026, Greenland has emerged as a political flashpoint between the United States and its European allies. Recent US statements have warned that Greenland is strategically exposed, citing Russian activity in the Arctic and questioning whether existing arrangements are sufficient to protect the island. These claims have been accompanied by renewed American pressure on Denmark and rhetoric revisiting the idea of US control or even annexation of Greenland.

“The world is not secure unless we have Complete and Total Control of Greenland”, US President Donald Trump wrote in a recent letter to the Norwegian prime minister.

Read charitably, the concern is straightforward. Greenland occupies a critical position for US missile defence, early warning, and control of the North Atlantic approaches. Intercontinental ballistic missiles pass over or near the island en route between Russia and North America. At the same time, melting ice caps are drawing increasing attention to Greenland’s resources and surrounding sea lanes.

Russia has expanded its military activity in the Arctic, while the United States and Denmark have significantly reduced their permanent presence on the island since the end of the Cold War. US personnel numbers have fallen from over 10,000 at their peak to roughly 150 today. Against the backdrop of a deteriorating European security environment, Greenland may appear from Washington as a vital asset guarded by limited forces and complex political arrangements.

The problem is that this debate has unfolded largely in political terms, with little attention paid to Russia’s actual ability to operate militarily against Greenland. When Russian naval capabilities and NATO control of the North Atlantic are examined in detail, the image of Greenland as a plausible target for Russian military operations quickly falls apart.

What follows is an assessment of capability and logistics rather than rhetoric or intent, based on publicly available information. It focuses on Russia’s ability to insert and sustain forces on Greenland and does not deny that Russia can contest NATO presence through submarines, long-range strikes, or sabotage.

Russian Amphibious Capability

Before the invasion of Ukraine, Russia’s amphibious lift capability in the High North rested with the Northern Fleet and consisted mainly of two Ivan Gren-class and four Ropucha-class landing ships. Together, these vessels could transport roughly 2,000 troops with equipment in a single lift.

During the war, this capacity has been sharply reduced. One Ivan Gren and two Ropucha-class ships were redeployed to the Black Sea, and one of the redeployed Ropucha-class vessels, Olenegorsky Gornyak, was damaged by Ukrainian attacks. As a result of these transfers, Russia’s available amphibious lift in the High North has been cut roughly in half. Under current conditions, Russia could likely deploy fewer than 1,000 troops in a single amphibious operation.

Even in a best-case post-war scenario, Russia would struggle to conduct operations larger than a brigade without drawing assets from other fleets, a slow and highly visible process. Regardless of force size, any landing force would still be constrained by Greenland’s geography and the requirement to sustain operations across vast distances.

Supplying Operations on Greenland

Any Russian operation against Greenland would require crossing nearly 2,000 kilometres of sea from bases around Murmansk through an environment under constant NATO surveillance. Reaching Greenland’s southern or western coasts would require transiting the Greenland-Iceland-UK (GIUK) Gap, monitored by British and allied submarines and air forces operating from Norway, Iceland, the United Kingdom, and Greenland itself. Even if an initial force were able to pass through before open hostilities, sustaining or reinforcing that force would be extraordinarily difficult. In practice, these constraints limit any Russian operations to Greenland’s eastern coast.

This area of Greenland is extremely sparsely populated, even more so than the western coast. Tasiilaq, the largest settlement, has around 2,000 inhabitants, while Ittoqqortoormiit, the second-largest, has fewer than 400 and only minimal port facilities. Seizing such settlements would offer little strategic value. They are separated from Greenland’s administrative and military centres by hundreds of kilometres of ice, tundra, and mountains, with no supporting infrastructure.

Once Russian forces were ashore, any attempt to supply or reinforce them, including the use of civilian or auxiliary vessels, would almost certainly be intercepted by NATO air and naval forces, even without direct US involvement. Russia would also be unable to provide sustained air support at such distances, leaving any foothold exposed to NATO airpower. Even if some supplies reached the coast, the limited port infrastructure would severely restrict reinforcement.

In short, even a successful landing of a multi-battalion force would result in isolated forces incapable of threatening the NATO installations concentrated on Greenland’s western coast.

Airborne Options

Airborne operations face even greater obstacles as Eastern Greenland lies at the outer limit of Russia’s practical airborne range. While Il-76 transport aircraft might theoretically reach the island from the Kola Peninsula, they would operate without fighter escort and likely transit near or through NATO-controlled airspace. This would leave them highly vulnerable to interception.

Even if airborne forces were inserted successfully in conjunction with amphibious forces, the Russian operation would still face the same sustainment problems as before. The outcome would not change, except for the number of Russian troops stranded on the island.

The NATO Perspective

These constraints are not symmetrical. NATO operates at far shorter distances and maintains control of the North Atlantic. Canada and the United States can airlift forces to western Greenland within hours, while European NATO navies can operate freely without facing comparable Russian air threats.

Although Russian submarines pose some risk, penetrating the GIUK Gap has been a persistent challenge for Russia since Soviet times. There is little reason to believe this has become easier. At the height of the Cold War, over 10,000 US personnel were stationed in Greenland under conditions of uncontested air and sea control. That control remains, while Russian capabilities have declined significantly since the end of the Soviet era.

Should the security situation change, Denmark and its NATO allies retain the ability to rapidly reinforce Greenland with additional permanent or rotational forces. Recent European deployments to the island, as of January 2026, demonstrate that such reinforcement can be conducted on short notice without significant logistical difficulty.

Conclusion

The portrayal of Greenland as vulnerable to Russian military operations is difficult to reconcile with military reality. Russia’s ability to operate against the island is sharply constrained by geography, logistics, and enduring NATO control of the North Atlantic. These constraints are structural and geographical. Even at the height of the Soviet Union, threatening Greenland would have been extremely difficult. Since the end of the Cold War, and especially following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Russia’s capacity for power projection this far west in the Arctic has only declined. Building a more robust capability would take years, during which NATO could easily respond.

If Russia sought to generate pressure in the Arctic, more accessible targets with fewer logistical constraints exist closer to Russian territory, such as Svalbard. Russia can still contest NATO presence around Greenland through submarines, long-range strikes, sabotage, or special forces, but these capabilities have long been known and are likely already incorporated into NATO planning.

Once these constraints are taken seriously, the idea of Russian military operations against Greenland ceases to appear credible and instead resembles a convenient narrative used to justify the expansionist US rhetoric.

The proposed peace initiative for Ukraine, driven by the United States, has been widely criticised as immoral and at odds with international law. These arguments are valid, but they do not address the central issue: a settlement that fully aligns with international norms would require a complete Russian withdrawal. Under current conditions, that is not a realistic expectation.

Instead any agreement that is based on the current military realities will naturally place Ukraine at a strategic disadvantage and further erode the rules-based international order. As things stand, there is no indication that the West, especially Europe, or Ukraine has either the political will or the means to prevent such an outcome.

The origins of the peace proposal remain unclear. Reporting suggests that parts of it were shaped within US policy circles and other parts by Putin’s special envoy Kirill Dmitriev. Some reports state that Steve Witkoff and J. D. Vance are the main drivers on the US side, but it is uncertain which elements of the US administration initially endorsed the initiative or whether Ukrainian policymakers had substantive input. According to other reports the draft is fundamentally similar to some of the plans the Russians have suggested earlier to the Trump administration.

The draft includes fundamental structural flaws. It references outdated security frameworks rather than present mechanisms. It proposes constraints on European defence without granting Europe corresponding agency. It suggests reintroducing Russia into international formats without enforceable accountability. It clearly indicates that the United States expects to profit from Ukraine’s reconstruction efforts. Security guarantees are presented as a core component, but in their current form they cannot be considered reliable.

Much of the public debate around the draft has, however, focused on the moral and legal implications. While understandable, this framing does not reflect current battlefield realities. Ukraine has largely remained on the defensive since the failure of its 2023 counteroffensive and the 2024 Kursk operation that did not yield durable results. Throughout 2025, Russian forces have advanced at a pace of over 400 square kilometres per month. Ukrainian manpower constraints are deepening, desertion rates are rising and the current defensive posture is a result of necessity, not strategic choice.

Western support has not been scaled to meet the challenge. Assistance remains insufficient to shift the operational balance and the current US administration is in parts openly hostile to the Ukrainian cause. The expectation that Russia would reach exhaustion has so far proven incorrect. Russia continues to absorb losses and retains mobilisation capacity that currently exceeds Ukraine’s.

Without a major change in Western policy, Ukraine is unlikely to regain the initiative. Based on the current state of Ukraine’s Armed Forces, it is even possible that Russian gains will accelerate rather than remain linear. Looking six to twelve months ahead, it looks unlikely that Ukraine’s negotiation position will significantly improve. Instead, should Russian advances continue, Ukraine’s leverage will diminish further.

However, Ukraine still retains a functioning military and continues to inflict losses on Russian forces. Continued fighting may slow the pace of Russian advances and prevent complete operational collapse, but it is unlikely to reverse existing territorial losses. The ability to remain in the field does not translate into improved negotiating leverage if the broader balance continues to shift against Ukraine.

Meanwhile, on the homefront Ukraine is also entering a period of increasing economic strain. The budget for 2026 and 2027 will rely heavily on external financial support simply to maintain basic government functions and sustain the war effort. Without substantial European backing, Kyiv will face significant fiscal shortfalls that could affect both military capacity and domestic stability. It seems that resolving this issue demands Europe to release tens of billions of dollars in assets frozen from Russia, a move that the countries holding those assets have been so far unwilling to do. At the same time, the government is managing a high-profile corruption scandal, which risks weakening public trust and is also complicating European attitudes towards Ukraine.

In these circumstances, Russia has little incentive to accept a settlement that merely freezes current lines, as continued offensive action offers the prospect of further gains over time. Economic pressures may affect Russian capabilities in the long term, but they are unlikely to alter this calculation in the near term.

Given this, demands for territorial concessions, for example, while politically and morally difficult as reflected in public debate, should be understood as an outcome of the existing power imbalance rather than a fair or voluntary trade. Under current conditions, Ukraine is not exchanging territory for sustainable security but losing ground through attrition. Without a significant shift in the course of the war, further territorial losses may occur by force even without an agreement.

A common truism in warfare is that fighting ends when negotiations become the least worst option for both sides. Negotiations only become meaningful once the participants have more to gain on the negotiating table than on the battlefield. At the moment Russia has reason to assume that continued fighting will bring it additional advantages, which reduces its incentive to accept compromise. Meanwhile Europe presents itself as a strong actor trying to shape the negotiations in Ukraine’s favour but does not have the leverage to steer the process. Both the United States and Russia are currently able to largely sideline Europe in the negotiations.

If Ukraine’s supporters lack a clear strategy to materially strengthen Ukraine to the point where further Russian advances are no longer expected, they are only buying time before having to accept a resolution that reflects the current battlefield realities.

Strategically, the situation aligns with the core tenets of realism: those who hold power set the terms, those without it are expected to accept them. Acknowledging this does not make the outcome just. It reflects the negotiation environment as it stands.

None of this means that Ukraine lacks room to negotiate or must simply accept the terms brought to the table last week. It’s also not clear that negotiating under the current framework will lead to the best possible outcome. For example, lasting stability would require robust and binding Western security guarantees, but those outlined in the original draft are neither clearly defined nor credible.

Nevertheless, under present conditions any realistic settlement is likely to be fundamentally unjust. It would disadvantage Ukraine, legitimise territorial gains made through force and weaken the rules-based international order. The determining factor is not law or preference but relative power. Without a major shift in Western strategy, Ukraine is likely to be pressured into a peace that is favourable to Russia and not grounded in justice. This is not moral or preferable, but it is simply the most likely outcome given the current trajectory of the war.

What has happened in Kursk over the past two weeks? Why were the Ukrainians forced to withdraw their forces from the salient? What does the loss of Kursk mean for the larger war effort and what will the Russians do next?

The long march to March

In August of 2024 the Ukrainians executed a surprise offensive into Russia’s Kursk Oblast. Suffering from manpower problems, losing ground in the east and the discourse around the war turning towards peace negotiations, the operation was likely drawn up as a way to ease the pressure Ukraine was facing.

As stated by Ukrainian officials, the goals of the operation were to draw Russian forces away from the city of Pokrovsk in Donetsk, occupy Russian ground to be used as a leverage in future peace negotiations, and spoil a possible Russian cross-border operation from Sumy. It’s likely that, if successful, the operation was also meant to create pressure on the western flanks of the Russian grouping in Kharkiv, and generally raise morale and shift international discourse away from the eastern front where Ukraine had been slowly losing ground for months.

The initial days of the operation looked promising. Ukraine caught the Russian troops on the border apparently by complete surprise and managed to capture over 1200 square kilometers of Russian territory while taking a large number of prisoners.

However, cracks soon began to appear

Ukraine failed to expand and secure the flanks of the Kursk perimeter, and as Russian reinforcements kept trickling in, the Ukrainian operation turned to a defensive one. Over the next half a year the Russians would significantly reduce the Ukrainian perimeter in Kursk. By the beginning of March 2025, the Ukrainians found themselves still holding onto a narrow salient some 15 kilometers wide and 30 kilometers long. With the latest Russian advances narrowing the mouth of the salient in February, the Ukrainian position in Kursk had become untenable.

Collapse was just a matter of time.

Bottleneck to Sudzha

The Ukrainian perimeter in Kursk was tied to the Sumy oblast of Ukraine by a narrow lifeline made up of two roads. The larger one of them, the main supply route (MSR), running from Sumy to the town of Sudzha through a Ukraine-Russia border crossing, and a smaller one, the secondary supply route (SSR) a route running over fields on the Ukrainian side of the border, and then joining a road on the Russian side of the border south of the village of Oleshnya

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Although the Russian rate of advance in Kursk had slowed down, they had continued to capture ground on the south-western flank of the perimeter. In February the Russians took the village of Sverdlikovo situated on the Russo-Ukrainian border and crossed the border to move towards the villages of Novenke and Basivka. The steady advance meant that Russia had created a bottleneck at the base of the salient.

From Sverdlikovo the Russians could constantly fly drones over both of these routes, creating what can be only described as “Kill Zones”, where a large amount of Ukrainian equipment was destroyed. This made the supply of the Ukrainian salient nearly impossible. Worse yet, the mild winter conditions had made off-road movement for vehicles extremely challenging.

Meanwhile on the eastern side of the salient, the Russians had created a minor bridgehead over the Psel river south of the village of Kurilovka. On Wednesday the 5th of March the Russians started expanding this bridgehead and launched an attack westwards towards the SSR.

According to Ukrainian sources, the forces used in this attack consisted of at least two battalions of North Korean troops. While these claims sound plausible, as of the publication of this article we have no hard evidence of North Korean involvement in these attacks.

By the end of Thursday, 6th of March the Russians had severed the SSR leaving the MSR as the only route out of the salient. The situation had become critical. If the Russian advance west of Kurilovka continued, and especially if it was met by a similar attempt directed towards the MSR from Sverdlikovo, the whole Ukrainian contingent still in Kursk might become encircled

The Ukrainians drew their operative reserves to counterattack the Russians advancing on the southern side of the perimeter. While the counterattack seems to have contained the Russian advance, it doesn’t seem like it managed to push the Russians backwards, leaving the whole salient vulnerable.

The North Collapses

The attack in the south was likely meant to be a part of a coordinated killing blow to the Kursk salient. Almost as soon as the southern attack had severed the SSR the Russians launched a renewed attack on the northern half of the salient all around the perimeter from the village of Malaya Loknaya all the way to Martynovka. The Ukrainians soon began to withdraw from the villages on the extreme edges of the perimeter, making their way towards Sudzha and the village of Kazachya Loknaya.

To the south-east of Sudzha the Russians also went on the offensive, but it’s likely there was less advance here and these attacks just likely tied up Ukrainian forces on this sector.

While there are some indications that the Ukrainians had rotated some of the more experienced units out of the Kursk before the start of the Russian offensive, it’s very unlikely that the Ukrainian withdrawal from the north was a planned maneuver. At the very least the Russian offensive disrupted any plans for withdrawal. However, some of the more important units, such as drone pilots, were prioritized in the withdrawal, which then made the situation more difficult for the remaining forces.

In the Ukrainian rear the Russians struck the remaining bridges over the Loknaya, Sudzha and Psel rivers, leaving the Ukrainian forces stranded on the far side. Some of the routes were also blocked by damaged Ukrainian equipment. This mean that the Ukrainians units had to make the grueling journey back to Ukraine on foot, some marching over 30 kilometers over multiple days.

Russian milbloggers published footage of Ukrainian forces withdrawing in tight columns of platoon to company size, clearly prioritizing speed and efficiency over protection from the drones flying overhead.

Other footage showed dead Ukrainian soldiers and captured equipment, including an M1 Abrams tank that had reportedly been taken relatively intact in Malaya Loknaya.

Testimonies from soldiers who made it

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back to Sumy and Ukrainian bloggers indicate that the withdrawal had been chaotic, and at best loosely coordinated. It’s likely that the initial order to withdraw was made by the local commanders after the situation in the salient started to deteriorate, and the higher echelons only reacted after the withdrawal was well underway.

Pipeline bandits

As a part of the northern offensive the Russians infiltrated a group of soldiers into the Ukrainian rear through an abandoned gas pipeline running through the battlespace. The soldiers emerged from the pipeline in the middle of a field north of the town of Sudzha and south of the village of Ivashkovskii. They soon moved southwest to take up positions in the forests surrounding the railway in the area.

Video evidence shows the Ukrainians hitting the Russians with cluster munitions, but the fate of the infiltration force is somewhat unclear. The Ukrainians claim that the Russian operation failed and the infiltrators were completely destroyed, while the Russians claim that despite some casualties the infiltration force moved south towards the industrial area NE of Sudzha, as well as north to capture the village of Kubatkin near Kazachya Loknaya. These maneuvers would’ve made the withdrawal of Ukrainian forces from Malaya Loknaya and Martynovka significantly more challenging.

It’s also unclear how large the Russian infiltration force was. Initial reports talk of a company sized force of a 100 or so soldiers, while later the Russian sources have claimed over 400, even up to 800, soldiers involved in the operation. A battalion sized force seems plausible considering the claimed objectives of the infiltrators.

While the Russian force did certainly take some initial casualties, it’s unlikely that the Ukrainians managed to destroy the whole contingent. A lot of footage of the troops within the pipeline was published soon after the operation started, but no footage of dead Russian infiltrators was shown. Thus it’s unlikely that the Ukrainians themselves managed to capture phones and footage from the infiltrators.

It’s also likely that the infiltrators did move north and south along the railway towards their claimed objectives. While it’s still unclear if the force managed to fully complete their objectives, it’s likely that the appearance of a battalion sized force deep within the Ukrainian perimeter further exasperated the chaotic situation in the salient and likely contributed to the decision of some local commanders to withdraw their troops from the extreme edges of the perimeter.

The end of the Kursk operation

Despite the Russian pressure, the Ukrainians managed to regroup and conduct delaying actions around the village of Kazachya Loknaya and the city of Sudzha. This bought precious time for the withdrawing units. The Ukrainians likely managed to hold Kazachya Loknaya at least over the weekend of 7th to 9th of March.

However, by the 11th of March, the Russians had captured Kazachya Loknaya and on the 12th the Russians were filmed with flags in the center of Sudzha. Despite the official Ukrainian claims that Ukrainian forces would not be abandoning Kursk, the salient practically disappeared leaving some square kilometers in Ukrainian hands by the end of the 13th of March. Fighting will likely continue on the outskirts of Sudzha and the border villages for some time, as the Russians wrap the operation up.

Some sources have claimed that the Russian advance was caused by the pause in US intelligence sharing that occurred around the start of the operation. We, however, dismiss that claim. The operation could not have been prepared at such a timetable that the Ukrainians would not have received some forewarning, and we not see such significant disruptions in Ukrainian operations on other fronts.

However, it is possible that the pause in intelligence sharing caused some local disruptions and gaps in situational awareness but not enough to explain the Russian success.

The situation on the ground speaks for itself: the disruption of Ukrainian logistics on a large scale meant that some kind of a withdrawal was only a matter of time. The Russians had also previously had success in creating local penetrations with large scale infantry assaults. The elements that lead to the collapse on had all been seen before, and the lack of intelligence sharing at most exasperated the situation, as did the withdrawal of the most important troops once the situation became critical.

By the end of the operation the most important thing for the Ukrainian war effort was force conservation: how well the Ukrainian managed to save their troops withdrawing from Kursk and how much equipment they could take with them.

The Ukrainian casualties are hard to assess. It seems that the Russians did not manage to encircle or trap a significant part of the Ukrainian force in the northern salient. Published footage, so far, only shows handfuls of Ukrainian prisoners at a time. However, a clearer picture of the casualties will likely emerge in the coming days and weeks.

At least some Ukrainian soldiers have compared the withdrawal to the battle of Debaltseve in 2015.

It’s likely that most of the heavy equipment and vehicles the Ukrainians had in the salient had to be left behind due to the drone threat over the remaining supply route.

It’s likely that the Ukrainians will complete their withdrawal to more defensive positions in Sumy over the coming days and weeks. After that the situation is murkier.

The Russians may keep their forces in this sector and attempt to follow the Ukrainian force over the border into Sumy, further pushing on the attack axes from Sverdlikovo and Kurilovka. This would also force the Ukrainians to keep a sizable contingent of defenders in this sector and prevent them from shifting the withdrawn troops as reserves to the eastern front.

However, the Russians might themselves see more value in shifting their forces to support their efforts in the Donetsk region, but in this case the Ukrainians would also be free to shift the withdrawn troops to other sector.

We believe it’s likely that the Russians will attempt to maintain at least some pressure on the Ukrainian forces in the Sumy oblast, as the Ukrainian troop commitment in Kursk has likely diminished their defenses on the eastern front.

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