Russia dismisses NATO warnings on Greenland as hysteria

Russia, which has moved to re-open and modernise a sprawling network of military bases in the Arctic in recent years, said in a statement on Thursday that it was watching the situation developing around Greenland with serious concern and called for the wider Arctic region to remain peaceful and stable.

"NATO has embarked on a course of accelerated militarisation of the North, building up its military presence there under the fictitious pretext of a growing threat from Moscow and Beijing," Russia's embassy in Belgium, where the US-led military alliance is based, said in a statement to the Izvestia newspaper.

"We can see that the alliance is using high-profile statements from Washington on the Greenland issue solely to promote an anti-Russian and anti-Chinese agenda," it said, listing recent European statements on Greenland's defence.

"The instigators of these bellicose plans appeal to mythical challenges that they themselves generate," the embassy said. It noted that even Western diplomats with access to NATO intelligence briefings cited in the media had acknowledged that no Russian or Chinese submarines had been spotted near Greenland in recent years.