Earlier today, 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 elephant in that grand and glittering Paris meeting and the underlying atmosphere was extremely tense.
Bear in mind the events of the last few days: the Trump administration’s controversial intervention in Venezuela and the US president’s insistence soon after, that “we need Greenland from the standpoint of national security”.
Greenland is the world’s largest island – it’s six times the size of Germany. It lies in the Arctic but is an autonomous territory of Denmark’s.
At the Paris meeting, Mette Frederiksen, Denmark’s Prime Minister, was sitting opposite two powerful figures representing Trump: special envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.
She was under pressure from European colleagues not to antagonise the US over Greenland, in case that impacts US support for Ukraine.
Europe’s leaders would have far preferred to keep Greenland and the debate on Ukraine separate. But with the political temperature mounting from Washington and Copenhagen, leaders of big European nations at the Paris meeting issued a statement saying: “Greenland is part of Nato. Security in the Arctic must therefore be achieved collectively, in conjunction with Nato allies including the United States”.