By Andrew Osborn
MOSCOW, Jan 15 (Reuters) - Russia said on Thursday that NATO's talk of Russia and China being a threat to Greenland was a myth designed to artificially whip up hysteria and that what it called the Western alliance's policy of escalating confrontation in the Arctic was extremely dangerous.
Russia's statement follows increasingly strident talk from U.S. President Donald Trump who has said he wants the U.S., which already has military facilities on Greenland, to take control of the Danish
overseas territory for national security reasons.
Trump argues that Denmark, whose troops are responsible for Greenland's defence, are not up to the job, something Copenhagen rejects.
Some European countries, including France, Germany, Norway and Sweden have begun deploying troops to Greenland in a show of support to Nuuk and Copenhagen which is organising a military exercise there.
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 U.S.-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, noting 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.
"This exposes the artificiality of the hysteria that is being whipped up," it said.
The statement did not directly criticise Trump, however, at a time when he remains a key interlocutor for Moscow in efforts to reach a peace deal in Ukraine. It turned its fire instead on NATO as an institution and on its European member states, which it also accuses of blocking peace efforts in Ukraine.
"We consider the alliance's policy of escalating confrontation in the Arctic to be counterproductive and extremely dangerous," the embassy said.
(Reporting by Andrew Osborn Editing by Alison Williams)
