Danish Prime Minister Rallies Urgently Needed Support for Ukraine

Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, one of four women leaders at the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) seventy-fifth-anniversary summit in Washington last week, minced no words in describing the threat that Russia’s aggression poses to Europe and beyond and the need for urgent collective action to stop it. In a discussion that I moderated at the Council on Foreign Relations, Frederiksen highlighted the contributions that Denmark has made under her leadership to strengthening the European pillar of NATO and to Ukraine’s defense, but also urged the alliance to move more rapidly to address critical gaps that are allowing Russia to advance.

“Why have we accepted a full-scale war for more than two-and-a-half year(s) in Europe?” she asked the audience, adding that “the only language Russia understands is power. ...I think we work and we move too slow. I think we have been too naïve on Russia, too naïve on China, and therefore we have to speed up, we have to scale up.” When asked about recent reports of Russian sabotage and irregular warfare tactics, she said, “Russia is trying to destabilize the entire world society. We see it in Europe with hybrid cyberattacks. We see it in the Western Balkan area. We see it in Africa and the whole Sahel region where Russia is extremely active.... You see what they are doing in the Middle East.”  

Frederiksen acknowledged that Denmark, along with much of Europe, underinvested in defense for years but noted that it is now stepping up. Twenty-three out of thirty-two NATO countries have now met the 2 percent defense budget target that the alliance agreed upon a decade ago at the Vilnius summit. Denmark is contributing 2.4 percent of its GDP to defense, up from 1.3 percent when Frederiksen became prime minister five years ago. Danish forces have deployed as part of NATO’s air, sea, and land defensive missions around Europe, and the government has decided to increase compulsory military service to eleven months and include women for the first time.

With overwhelming support from the Danish public, since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine Denmark has provided 7.2 billion euros in civil and military assistance. The country donated its entire artillery system to Ukraine as well as its F-16 fighter jets, which are expected to be flying over Ukraine later this summer. In February, Frederiksen received a standing ovation in Ukraine’s parliament when she announced a ten-year bilateral security pact with the country, one of twenty countries to do so as NATO membership awaits the end of the war. Denmark is funding efforts to build Ukraine’s defense production capacity and as a stopgap joined the Czech Republic and the Netherlands in financing ammunition purchases.

Asked what should be done in the coming months, Frederiksen said, “I think we have been reacting too slowly, to be very honest with you.” The prime minister criticized the halting U.S. response to Ukraine’s urgent appeals for air defense as Russia’s attacks on cities, civilians, and hospitals have mounted. Months ago, she said, “they asked us very concretely to give at least seven Patriot systems. They have received two, and I think that is one of our main problems because we have much more systems—you have a lot of them in U.S.” She also challenged the restrictions the White House has placed on Ukraine’s use of American-supplied missile systems such as Army Tactical Missile Systems. The fear of Putin's threat to use nuclear weapons led the administration to deny most of Ukraine’s requests to target the deadly rain of missiles, drones, and bombs being fired from Russian territory. In one exception, Washington allowed Ukraine to hit back against Russia to stop its assault on Kharkiv this summer. Russian attacks stopped without further reprisals, given that city needed breathing room. Frederiksen intimated that she would lift those restrictions: “The red line that I have is that Russia cannot decide upon the future of Europe.”

Finally, Frederiksen discussed Denmark’s efforts to bolster democracy and to corral the negative effects that digital technology is having on democracies around the world. Denmark launched the Tech for Democracy Initiative in 2021 and has partnered with the United States in the Summit for Democracy and the Global Partnership for Action on Online Harassment and Abuse. Denmark has historically enjoyed one of Europe’s lowest rates of cyberbullying and harassment, but the continent was shocked in June when Frederiksen was physically attacked in normally peaceful Copenhagen, where senior officials bike to work and walk without bodyguards. She noted in press statements that she regarded it as an attack on the prime ministership and revealed that “threats over a long period of time on social media have gotten worse.”

At the CFR meeting, she said:

“I think what we are facing now with new technology and especially with social media, I think, is the most challenging conflict for democracy in front of us—the most challenging thing in front of us. The social media are dividing us. They make us less clever as human beings. We are reading more social media now than books. ... we have been fighting for thousands of years to be clever and to be strong as human beings, and now it’s almost going the opposite way.”

She advocates for legislation to curb social media abuse: “So I think we have to be very tough on the tech giants—very tough, and we are not tough at all at the moment.” She concluded: “if we don’t feel safe, no matter if it’s because of our gender, or if it’s because we are politicians, or anything else, then democracies do not work.”