In a video that is mentioned, among other places, in the Danish edition of the Russian propaganda media outlet Pravda, Greenland’s Minister for Foreign Affairs, Vivian Motzfeldt, and Mininnguaq Kleist, a long-time civil servant and head of Greenland’s Department for Foreign Affairs and Research, participate in a video meeting with a European official.
At least that is what they themselves believe, according to the Danish fact-checking outlet and NORDIS partner TjekDet.
The reality, however, is different. It is not a European official that Vivian Motzfeldt is speaking with, but a Russian comedian duo who have previously attracted attention by setting up a similar false meeting with Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen. At that time it was a 15-minute video meeting in which Lars Løkke Rasmussen discussed the war in Ukraine and the possibility of peace negotiations between Ukraine and Russia with the comedians.
Back in 2020, the duo also tricked the Foreign Policy Committee of the Danish Parliament when they pretended to be the Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya. Also a number of other politicians from different European countries have been the subject of the duo’s fake interviews, which have typically targeted those who are critical of the Russian government or Russian foreign policy, particularly non-Russians.
The new video with Vivian Motzfeldt lasts a little over five minutes. The two comedians behind the joke go by the names Vovan and Lexus on the video platform Rumble, where they regularly share prank videos with various politicians – and now also with Vivian Motzfeldt, which is shared under the title “Prank with Minister of Foreign Affairs of Greenland”.
During the meeting, one half of the comedian duo begins by expressing his admiration for Vivian Motzfeldt and Mininnguaq Kleist’s fight for the rights of the Greenlandic people.
“It must have been very difficult for you to become the center of all these diplomatic scandals. But we, Europeans, must do everything we can to support you and defend Greenland and Denmark’s territorial integrity,” it says in the video.
In the video, the Russian comedian among other things asks Vivian Motzfeldt whether she believes that Russia and China are a threat to Greenland. To this she replies that Greenland has made it clear that they do not have any Russian or Chinese ships in their waters and that they do not have any Chinese or Russian investments.
On the other hand, she says that, like the rest of the world, they would like to have more Chinese tourists.
It is TjekDet’s assessment that Vivian Motzfeldt does not reveal information that the public does not already know.
In the article in which the Russian propaganda media outlet Pravda mentions the false video meeting, the Greenlandic Minister for Foreign Affairs is described as being “afraid”. Pravda focuses on Vivian Motzfeldt’s rejection that there is a threat to Greenland and quotes her as saying that there are no Russian or Chinese ships in Greenlandic waters.
Mininnguaq Kleist, who is head of department and appears in the video, tells TjekDet that the matter is being investigated. He confirms that there has been a conversation with “a man”.
TjekDet has not succeeded in obtaining a comment from Vivian Motzfeldt.
Network with attention
The Russian propaganda network Pravda is behind a large number of websites in different languages that publish large amounts of pro-Russian content.
The network consists of hundreds of domains that automatically copy articles from Kremlin-friendly media and pro-Russian channels on social media.
It is not only Pravda’s own website that disseminates the stories. A previous mapping carried out by NORDIS found that AI chatbots such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Copilot in some cases reproduced information from Pravda sites when they were asked questions in the Nordic languages. In some cases, chatbots for example referred to the Danish Pravda site as a source for a false story about a Danish F-16 pilot who was allegedly killed in Ukraine.