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Hundreds of Danish protesters, many of whom are military veterans who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, staged a demonstration in Copenhagen on Saturday outside the U.S. Embassy.
The group was protesting President Donald Trump’s push that the U.S. acquire Greenland from Denmark and his remarks at Davos that NATO forces “stayed a little back” when they fought alongside the U.S. in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“They have a feeling that they’ve been betrayed,” Carsten Rasmussen, president of the Danish Veterans Association, told The Associated Press. “And of course, they are angered by this. They deployed. They fought with the Americans. They fought with the Brits. They fought together. They bled together. And as you have heard here in front of the American embassy today, 52 of them never returned.”
Forty-four Danish soldiers died in Afghanistan, the highest per capita death toll for a NATO country in the war, and eight more died in Iraq. The population of Denmark as of 2025 was just over 6 million.
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Protesters at the U.S. Embassy in Copenhagen on Saturday. (Emil Helms/Ritzau Scanpix via AP)
During the protest, demonstrators laid 52 flags with the names of the fallen outside the embassy.
“Behind all these flags, there’s a guy, there’s a soldier, there’s a young man,” Lt. Col. Niels Christian Koefoed, a Dane who served in Afghanistan, told Reuters.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer called Trump’s remarks about staying a “little back” “”insulting and frankly appalling,” to which Trump wrote on Truth Social: “The GREAT and very BRAVE soldiers of the United Kingdom will always be with the United States of America!”
He didn’t, however, acknowledge the sacrifices of other NATO troops.
“Denmark has always stood side by side with the USA — and we have showed up in the world’s crisis zones when the USA has asked us to,” Danish Veterans & Veteran Support, the group that organized the protest, said in a statement. “We feel let down and ridiculed by the Trump Administration, which is deliberately disregarding Denmark’s combat side by side with the USA.”
Hundreds of Danish veterans and other demonstrators protested outside the U.S. Embassy in Copenhagen, Saturday. (Emil Helms/Ritzau Scanpix via AP)
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The group added that “Words cannot describe how much it hurts us that Denmark’s contributions and sacrifices in the fight for democracy, peace and freedom are being forgotten in the White House.”
Fox News Digital has reached out to the White House for comment.
On Greenland earlier this month, U.S. ambassador to NATO Matthew Whitaker told Fox News Digital that NATO has a “tendency to overreact.”
Whitaker said Greenland’s importance has been clear for years as the ice melts, it reshapes the Arctic and opens new routes. “The security of the high north, which I’ve talked about a lot before this ever happened, is the most important issue,” he said. “As the ice thaws and as routes open up in the Arctic, Arctic security, and therefore the security of Greenland, which is the northern flank of the continental United States, is crucial.”
The protesters felt “insulted” by President Donald Trump’s remark that NATO troops stayed “a little back” in Afghanistan and Iraq. (Emil Helms/Ritzau Scanpix via AP)
He stressed that Greenland’s location makes it central to U.S. defense planning. “If you think about Greenland as part of the access to the naval assets, that monitoring and awareness and fortification of that part of the Western Hemisphere is crucial for the long-term security of the United States,” Whitaker said.
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He said recent diplomacy shows the issue can be addressed without escalation. “I know that a very successful meeting happened between the Danes and Greenland and Vice President Vance and Secretary of State Rubio, so I think it’s going to be constructive.”