Greenlandic PM says US ambitions on controlling the territory still show no sign of changing

Greenland’s premier, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, is telling international audiences that he still reads US policy as aimed at control of the Danish autonomous territory—not merely extra radar sites—even as the Trump administration trades public seizure talk for working-group sessions with Copenhagen and Nuuk.

The through-line is easiest to date to 2 February 2026, when Nielsen warned Greenland’s parliament, via a translator in wire copy, that “the view upon Greenland and the population has not changed: Greenland is to be tied to the U.S. and governed from there,” and that Washington continues seeking “paths to ownership and control over Greenland,” even after President Donald Trump had publicly ruled out military force. The same address described acute stress across society—“some of our compatriots have severe sleep problems, children feel the worry and anxiety of adults”—and called the pressure “completely unacceptable.”

What changed in May: tone, not the ownership argument

At the Copenhagen Democracy Summit on 12 May 2026, Nielsen acknowledged that negotiations with the United States had “taken some steps in the right direction” and that conversations were “in a better place than when we had our conversations through the media,” according to BBC reporting from the Danish capital. The same day, in remarks carried by Irish and Singaporean wires, he still insisted: “We are negotiating but we don’t have an agreement,” while repeating Greenland’s willingness to shoulder more security work under existing law provided it comes with respect.

Those wires recap a 1951 defence pact, updated in 2004, that already lets Washington expand troops and installations if Denmark and Greenland are informed in advance—legal scaffolding that makes “more bases” a negotiable technical matter while leaving Greenland’s self-rule government to argue that sovereignty itself is off the table. Nielsen’s public mantra through the spring has stayed blunt on the latter point: “We are not to be taken. We are not for sale,” he told reporters in Copenhagen, in the same BBC dispatch.

What Washington is asking for behind closed doors

BBC sourcing in the same news cycle describes US officials pursuing three new military facilities in southern Greenland to widen surveillance toward the GIUK gap, supplementing the long-standing Pituffik installation in the north-west. One source briefed on the talks said negotiators had floated treating some facilities as US sovereign territory—a detail the White House would not confirm on the record and that Greenlandic representatives in Washington declined to discuss when approached by the BBC.

The article also sketches a Washington-based working group that had met at least five times since mid-January, pairing senior US State Department staff with Danish permanent-secretary and ambassador-level figures and Greenland’s lead diplomat in the US capital. Trump’s named envoy to Greenland, Louisiana governor Jeff Landry, was portrayed by several sources as largely absent from those technical sessions, raising questions in allied capitals about which channel actually sets US bargaining positions.

Denmark’s hung parliament and the next moves

Parallel reporting notes Denmark has lacked a fully formed cabinet since a 24 March 2026 election produced no majority bloc, complicating how quickly Copenhagen can bless any complex basing or status-of-forces package even when Nuuk and Washington find provisional language. Nielsen has flagged a possible visit by Landry to Greenland the following week while stressing any meeting must stay “with respect.”

For readers sorting signal from noise: Nielsen’s office is not denying that talks exist or that Arctic security is a shared NATO worry; it is insisting that ownership language and coercive framing have not been retired in substance just because January’s loudest threats quieted. The diplomatic months ahead will test whether new installations can be written as voluntary, treaty-grounded cooperation—or read in Nuuk as another route toward the control Nielsen says he still sees on the horizon.