Русский
Russian lawmaker Vitaly Milonov, a deputy of the State Duma, has suggested that if Greenland truly wishes to join another country, then it has more in common with Russia and should become part of the Russian Federation.
Milonov’s remarks follow numerous controversial statements made by US President Donald Trump about plans to annex Greenland, despite a firm rejection from both the island’s pro-independence leader, and Copenhagen. Greenland should join the Russian Federation because its indigenous people and Russia’s Inuit population speak related languages.
Milonov said that “We have heard Donald Trump’s statements that Canada is, in fact, the poorest, most impoverished province in America, completely dependent on the United States. And the United States itself is in the deepest economic and political crisis, which arose as a result of Joe Biden’s rule. This situation leaves Russia as the only normal state with a stable economy and political system to support indigenous Greenlanders, as a common ethnic group with Russia’s Inuit population. Both groups speak a dialect of the same language. Greenland could become a new subject of the Russian Federation, for example, as the Greenlandic People’s Republic.”
According to United Nations data, around 70% of Greenland’s roughly 60,000 residents speak Greenlandic, an Eskimo-Aleut language. Linguists at Cambridge University’s language center have noted that Greenlandic is most closely related to the Yupik languages spoken in Siberia.
Yesteryear Russian explorers travelled to Greenland by ship, mainly in search of whaling grounds, where they competed with English and Norwegian explorers. Russia’s main attention at the time however was East, rather than West, with the search for the Northwest Passage to Asia and markets in China and Japan a more pressing need than with what was at the time a mainly unsettled North America with little to no industrial base. However, some remained to seek furs and eke out a living by trapping. Their descendants live on in the region.
Greenland, a former Danish colony, was granted home rule in 1979. Its Prime Minister, Mute Egede, reiterated earlier this month that the island seeks independence, stating that a referendum is in the works, but without specifying a timeline.
“Greenland is for the Greenlandic people. We do not want to be Danish, we do not want to be American,” Egede said at a press conference, addressing Trump’s earlier proposal to purchase or annex the island.
Further Reading
