BRUSSELS, April 21. /TASS/. The US claims to Greenland have become a watershed moment for the deterioration of relations within NATO, which has started with Donald Trump’s administration coming to power, the war with Iran has just further exacerbated the situation, Russian Ambassador to Belgium Denis Gonchar told TASS.

"The tensions between the US and other NATO member states have started to arise with Donald Trump coming to power. He demanded a more "just" distribution of the financial burden from his allies and forced them to assume "financial bondage" at the NATO summit in the Hague (in June 2025 on increasing defense spending to 5% of GDP by 2035 - TASS). However, NATO member states have tolerated pressure and humiliation from the US side in the name of preserving the US "defense umbrella," the ambassador noted.

"The Greenland crisis has become a watershed moment, when the US president "impinged on the sacred" - the European part of the transatlantic space, showing that Washington’s political expediency was of greater importance for him than so-called "transatlantic unity." "The situation has worsened following the beginning of the US and Israel’s war against Iran," Gonchar stressed.