Kirill Dmitriev attacks Mette Frederiksen, the Prime Minister of Denmark / “She deserves to lose Greenland. Those who incite war will lose.”

Kirill Dmitriev, the Russian president’s special representative for investment and international economic cooperation and director of the Russian Direct Investment Fund, launched a verbal attack on Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen in a message posted on the X platform.

The Russian official was responding to criticism voiced by Frederiksen after Finnish President Alexander Stubb and Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre held a telephone conversation with Vladimir Putin about the war in Ukraine.

“She deserves to lose Greenland. Those who incite war will lose. Dialogue will prevail,” Dmitriev wrote, according to News.ro, referring to the Danish head of government and Copenhagen’s position on the conflict.

Mette Frederiksen had said that the talks held by the Finnish and Norwegian leaders with the Russian president had not been coordinated with their European allies. The telephone contacts represented a departure from the practice of several Western European leaders, who have recently avoided direct dialogue with the Kremlin.

Stubb and Støre’s initiative was met with scepticism by Frederiksen and Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson. The two Nordic leaders questioned the appropriateness of such contacts in the absence of prior coordination among allies. Dmitriev’s statements add political tensions to a debate over Europe’s strategy toward Russia and negotiations to end the war in Ukraine.