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Denmark recalls frigate from Africa over Ukraine crisis

Denmark on Friday announced it was calling home a military frigate on an anti-piracy mission in the Gulf of Guinea, over ongoing tensions with Russia over Ukraine.

Published: 18 February 2022 17:36 CET
The Danish frigate Esbern Snare
The Danish frigate Esbern Snare pictured in 2018. Photo: Henning Bagger/Ritzau Scanpix

The frigate Esbern Snare, which has been patrolling the waters off the coast of West Africa since October 2021, will be added to the forces made available by Copenhagen to NATO in Europe, the defence minister announced.

“We have received a request from NATO to reinforce our readiness and our contribution to deterrence. We have received a request to strengthen the readiness with one of our frigates,” Morten Bødskov told reporters after a meeting in parliament.

The minister declined to say where the frigate, which should arrive in Europe in early March, would be positioned.

The vessel, which has a crew of 100, is a so-called multi-role frigate launched in 2005, able to engage in marine, submarine and anti-aircraft combat.

Last week, Denmark began boosting its military preparedness in response to Russia’s “unacceptable military pressure” on Ukraine, placing a mobile battalion of 700-800 soldiers on alert under NATO command in the east of the country.

Copenhagen has deployed four F-16 fighter jets to Lithuania and announced in January it would send a frigate with 160 crew to reinforce NATO patrols in the Baltic Sea.

READ ALSO: Why the possibility of US troops in Denmark is unprecedented

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POLITICS

Founder of far-right Danish People’s Party to retire from politics

Pia Kjærsgaard, the woman who built the far-right Danish People's Party into the kingmaker of Danish politics, transforming the country's immigration debate, has announced her retirement from parliament.

Published: 13 September 2024 17:01 CEST
Founder of far-right Danish People's Party to retire from politics

The 77-year-old, who stepped down from the leadership of her party in 2012 after 17 years at the helm, said in an interview on Friday that she would cease to be an MP when the current parliamentary term ends in 2026.

“You have to go when you are loved and respected. I feel very loved by my supporter base and by the party and also by a good part of the population,” I think it’s fair to say Kjærsgaard said in an interview on the TV2 channel. “So the time is now, after 40 years at [the parliament in] Christiansborg.” 

 
Kjærsgaard was elected as an MP for the now defunct Progress Party in 1984, leading the party for ten years between 1985 and 1995, when she left to found the Danish People’s Party. 
 
After the party became the third largest in parliament in the 2001 elections, Kjærsgaard forced the centre-right coalition led by Anders Fogh Rasmussen to push through a drastic tightening of immigration law, which her party boasted made Denmark “Europe’s strictest” country for immigration. 
 
Kjærsgaard has frequently generated controversy, accusing foreigners of “breeding like rabbits”, arguing that the 9/11 attacks did not represent a clash of civilisations as only one side was civilised, and accusing Muslim migrants of having “no desire whatsoever to take part in Danishness”, and of having “contempt for everything Western”. She has said that Islam “with fundamentalist tendencies” should be “fought to the highest degree”, condemning the religion as “medieval”. In 2020, she tried to blame minority communities for a city-wide outbreak of Covid-19 in Aarhus.

She was reported to the police in 2002 for referring to Muslims as people who “lie, cheat and deceive” in her party’s weekly newsletter, but was never prosecuted. 

The Danish People’s Party’s current leader, Morten Messerschmidt, had warm words for his party’s founder following her announcement. 

“Pia has not only been a colleague and a friend, but also an inspiration to me and many others,” he wrote on X. “Her unwavering commitment, fighting spirit and courage have characterised Danish politics for several decades.” 

Since Kjærsgaard stood down in 2012, support for the once powerful party has collapsed, with its share of the vote falling from 21 percent in the 2015 election to just 2.6 percent of the vote in the last national election in 2022.  

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