00:00First of all, Mestersvig, the average temperature is minus nine, five months a year.
00:05It's pitch black, and that's during the wintertime.
00:09A small Danish military detachment has quietly kept watch for decades at Mestersvig.
00:15Currently, only three soldiers maintain the facility, which was built to house 150 in the 1960s.
00:22A place as remote and cold as you can find in the world, says former officer Anders Ibsen.
00:28He should know. He used to be part of Denmark's elite Sirius dog patrol unit, which uses the outpost to
00:36resupply.
00:37So Mestersvig is located in the biggest national park in the world, in northeast Greenland, this area.
00:44And this area is the size of France and Germany combined.
00:4927 people live there. That is 17 kilometers of road.
00:53In the southern part of this huge area, Mestersvig is located.
01:00It oversees the stretch of ocean between Greenland, Iceland and Britain, the GI-UK gap,
01:07that Russia's northern fleet must cross to reach the Atlantic.
01:11Controlling this choke point is critical for NATO to contain Russian naval power.
01:16Under a new defense agreement, Washington will be allowed to establish a new base at Mestersvig,
01:23which has an airstrip long enough for military transport planes to land, and at Nasser Soak in southern Greenland.
01:30I want more military presence, especially on the east coast of Greenland.
01:34In Copenhagen, a member of the Greenlandic parliament, Justus Hansen, welcomes the expansion.
01:40Because it is so isolated, remote, it's important also for Europe,
01:47through this gap between Greenland and especially Iceland, and Faroe Island and Norway.
01:55So yeah, and establishing a base there is obvious.
02:01So yeah, accommodate of course interference from Russia, China and so on.
02:07The income of taxes and so on will benefit the whole country.
02:12And of course, east Greenland, we really need that new money.
02:16The US has made no public announcement about its plans for the base at Mestersvig.
02:21It's a location with great strategic value and some of the harshest conditions, says Ibsen, the former officer.
02:27The average snowfall is between 2 and 5 meters.
02:32So when it's snowing, you're basically removing the snow 24-7.
02:37So just staying alive and working takes a lot of your time.
02:43Go to www.marginter.org
02:45Come to the pibber.
02:45Go to the table.
02:45Go to the toilet.
02:45Go to the toilet.
