Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis has become the butt of jokes on social media after buying an expensive globe to “find Greenland”.
The autonomous territory of Denmark has hit the headlines because US President Donald Trump has threatened to seize control of it.
Trump’s ambition has rocked NATO and spelt trouble for Babis, a self-declared “Trumpist”, who spent hundreds of dollars on a globe and posted to social media about it.
Jokes were quick to flood the web, one user posting a mocked-up news article claiming scammers had sold an expensive globe to “a gullible pensioner”.
An X user named “BezeLzi” (“NoLies”) said Babis should also look up Ukraine so he could “learn how close the war is”, after he had rejected military aid to Kyiv battling a Russian invasion since 2022.
The 71-year-old tycoon leads a three-party coalition government including eurosceptics and far-right politicians.
Babis has insisted on steering foreign policy since taking office last December, but he has stumbled on the world’s largest island.
“I have bought this globe for 15,000 koruna ($720), a lovely, large one, to see exactly where this Greenland is,” Babis told reporters on Monday when asked about his government’s policy on the US-Denmark rift.
Standard globes typically sell for up to 1,000 koruna.
On Tuesday, Babis went a step further in a Facebook video where he complained that conventional maps skewed geographical facts.
“On this beautiful globe, you can see the real size of Greenland against the United States and Europe,” he said.
“And here, in close proximity, is Russia and if there were a conflict, heaven forbid, the rocket would not fly long.”
Ondrej Sveda, a spokesman for the Heureka price comparison site, said globe searches were on the up.
“Since Monday, we have seen a growth of 420 percent, a leap by hundreds of searches,” he told AFP.
Trump has meanwhile backed down on his plan to take Greenland by force.
And Babis has offered an explanation for the craze.
“I have entertained some people and some are laughing at me, because their brains are different from mine,” he said.
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