On Tuesday, the so-called Coalition of the Willing, largely made up of European leaders, met in Paris with envoys of US President Donald Trump, to try to make further progress on a sustainable peace deal for Ukraine.
With Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky insisting a plan to end the war with Russia is “90% of the way there”, no-one in that room wanted to jeopardise keeping the Americans onboard.
But there was an immense Greenland-shaped elephant in that grand and glittering Paris meeting.
Greenland is the world’s biggest island – it’s six times the size of Germany. It lies in the Arctic but it is an autonomous territory of Denmark.
And Donald Trump insists he wants it; needs it for US national security.
Denmark’s Prime Minister Mette Federiksen was at the Paris meeting. She’s a key EU ally of many of the leaders attending; a key Nato ally of the United Kingdom.
None of those countries want to risk antagonising Donald Trump but with the political temperature rising in Washington and in Copenhagen, six big European powers, including the UK, France and Germany, issued a joint statement on the sidelines of the Ukraine talks.
They said that security in the Arctic should be achieved collectively, together with Nato allies including the United States, and that it was for Denmark and Greenland alone to decide on matters concerning Denmark and Greenland.
But was that really enough to contain Trump’s ambitions?